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GETTING READY FOR THE MARRIAGE MARKET? A RESPONSE

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 January 2011

PETTER LUNDBORG ,
PAUL NYSTEDT  and
BJÖRN LINDGREN
PETTER LUNDBORG
Affiliation:
Department of Economics, Lund University, Sweden
PAUL NYSTEDT
Affiliation:
Department of Economics, Linköping University, Sweden
BJÖRN LINDGREN
Affiliation:
Department of Economics, University of Gothenburg, Sweden National Bureau of Economic Research, USA
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Summary

Overweight and obesity constitute a major and increasing health and welfare problem throughout the world. Assessing the multifaceted mechanisms – biological, environmental and behavioural – behind this development is a crucial task in medical, social and economic sciences. We are, therefore, grateful to have been given the opportunity to, once again, discuss whether the risk of divorce may be one of the factors influencing the incentives of becoming overweight or obese and, hence, ultimately the physical appearance among the married. In this Debate, colleagues Schneider and Grimps present the results of a multilevel analysis, in which they could not identify any statistically significant association between body mass index (BMI) and divorce risk among married people. Thus, they question the findings, previously published in this Journal (Lundborg et al., 2007). The Schneider and Grimps arguments are not convincing, however. So, we still claim that the statistical material at hand does, indeed, imply that divorce risk at the national level may well influence the weight of the married.

Type
Debate
Information
Journal of Biosocial Science , Volume 44 , Issue 2 , March 2012 , pp. 235 - 242
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2011

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