Why Does Getting Married Make You Fat? Incentives and Appearance Maintenance

Married individuals weigh more on average than non-married individuals. We suggest that exiting the dating market decreases one’s incentive to maintain their appearance and leads to an increase in body weight. We hypothesize that it is most difficult for individuals to exit a traditional marriage, and easiest for individuals to exit if the couple is cohabitating but not legally married. Using a 14-year panel data set, we test whether or not the ease of exiting a domestic relationship affects weight gain. For men, we find that the type of domestic relationship has little impact on weight gain. For women, however, marriage leads to a 2.4 kg weight gain compared to cohabitating. * Rady School of Management, University of California, San Diego ** Department of Economics, University of California, San Diego