Globesity: Is Globalization a Pathway to Obesity?

All rights reserved. No part of this paper may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieve system, without permission in writing from the publishers. We thank Pankaj Ghemawat and seminar participants at the PPSRC IESE, LSE Health and the HERU at Brunel University for great comments. We are grateful to Victor Burguete for invaluable research assistance. Núria Mas is grateful to PPSRC for research support and to the financial support from Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia ECO2009-13169 and ECO2012-38134. Abstract Obesity has risen dramatically at the same time as globalization has surged, which poses the question of whether the two are related. In this paper we analyze whether empirical evidence confirms the association between the different types of globalization (economic, political or social) and obesity using data from 15 up to 23 different countries for up to 15 years, as well as three primary outcomes: obesity, caloric intake and grams of fat consumed and a set of controls for micro-mechanisms that have been found to affect obesity in the economic and health literature. Our results are suggestive of a robust association between globalization and obesity, caloric intake and grams from fat consumed. Once we control for indirect micromechanisms associated with globalization such as food prices, female labor market participation, as well as urbanization and income, the direct impact of economic globalization is not significant, whilst 'social globalization' remains as a having robust and strong effect on the three measures of obesity. A one standard deviation increase in the index of social globalization from the Swiss federal institute of technology Zurich (KOF index) implies a rise of 3 percentage points in the proportion of obese population. It leads to a rise of 217 kcal and of 23.1 grams of fat consumed, respectively. Urbanization has a negative impact on the consumption of fat and caloric intake, while female labor force participation has a positive relationship with the three obesity outcomes.