经济学人：肥胖者的薪酬差距比之前想象的更严重

Obese people experience discrimination in many parts of their lives, and the workplace is no exception. Studies have long shown that obese workers, defined as those with a body-mass index (BMI) of 30 or more, earn significantly less than their slimmer counterparts. In America, several state and local governments are contemplating laws against this treatment. On November 22nd, one such ban came into force in New York City.

肥胖者在生活的许多方面都会受到歧视，工作场所也不例外。长期以来的研究表明，肥胖工人（体重指数 (bmi) 为 30 或以上的工人）的收入明显低于苗条工人。在美国，一些州和地方政府正在考虑制定法律来反对这种待遇。 11 月 22 日，一项此类禁令在纽约市生效。

Yet the costs of weight discrimination may be even greater than previously thought. “The overwhelming evidence,” wrote the Institute for Employment Studies, a British think-tank, in a recent report, “is that it is only women living with obesity who experience the obesity wage penalty.” They were expressing a view that is widely aired in academic papers. To test it, The Economist has analysed data concerning 23,000 workers from the American Time Use Survey, conducted by the Bureau of Labour Statistics. Our number-crunching suggests that, in fact, being obese hurts the earnings of both women and men.

然而体重歧视的成本可能比之前想象的还要大。英国智库就业研究所在最近的一份报告中写道：“压倒性的证据是，只有肥胖女性才会遭受肥胖工资惩罚。” 他们表达了学术论文中广泛传播的观点。为了测试这一点，《经济学人》分析了美国劳工统计局进行的美国时间利用调查中涉及 23,000 名工人的数据。我们的数据分析表明，事实上，肥胖会损害女性和男性的收入。

image: The Economist 图片来源：《经济学家》

The data we analysed cover men and women aged between 25 and 54 and in full-time employment. At an aggregate level, it is true that men’s BMIs are unrelated to their wages. But that changes for men with university degrees. For them, obesity is associated with a wage penalty of nearly 8%, even after accounting for the separate effects of age, race, graduate education and marital status. When we re-ran our analysis, using a different dataset that covers nearly 90,000 people, from the Department of Health and Human Services, we got similar results.

我们分析的数据涵盖年龄在 25 岁至 54 岁之间的全职就业男性和女性。从总体水平来看，男性的体重指数确实与其工资无关。但对于拥有大学学位的男性来说，情况发生了变化。对他们来说，即使考虑了年龄、种族、研究生教育和婚姻状况的单独影响，肥胖也会导致近 8% 的工资损失。当我们使用来自卫生与公众服务部的涵盖近 90,000 人的不同数据集重新进行分析时，我们得到了类似的结果。

The conclusion—that well-educated workers in particular are penalised for their weight—holds for both sexes (see chart 1). Moreover, the higher your level of education, the greater the penalty. We found that obese men with a bachelor’s degree earn 5% less than their thinner colleagues, while those with a graduate degree earn 14% less. Obese women, it is true, still have it worse: for them, the equivalent figures are 12% and 19%, respectively.

这一结论——受过良好教育的工人尤其会因为体重而受到惩罚——对男女都适用（见图 1）。而且，你的受教育程度越高，处罚就越大。我们发现，拥有学士学位的肥胖男性的收入比较瘦的同事低 5%，而拥有研究生学位的男性的收入则低 14%。确实，肥胖女性的情况更糟：对她们来说，相应的数字分别为 12% 和 19%。

image: The Economist 图片来源：《经济学家》

Your line of work makes a difference, too (see chart 2). When we crunched the numbers for individual occupations and industries, we found the greatest disparities in high-skilled jobs. Obese workers in health care, for example, make 11% less than their slimmer colleagues; those in management roles make roughly 9% less, on average. In sectors such as construction and agriculture, meanwhile, obesity is actually associated with higher wages.

您的工作也会产生影响（参见图 2）。当我们计算各个职业和行业的数据时，我们发现高技能工作的差距最大。例如，医疗保健行业的肥胖员工的收入比苗条同事低 11%；担任管理职位的人的平均收入大约减少 9%。与此同时，在建筑和农业等行业，肥胖实际上与更高的工资有关。

These results suggest that the aggregate costs of wage discrimination borne by overweight workers in America are hefty. Suppose you assume that obese women, but not men, face a wage penalty of 7% (the average across all such women in our sample) and that this is the same regardless of their level of education. Then a back-of-the-envelope calculation suggests that they bear a total cost of some $30bn a year. But if you account for both the discrimination faced by men, and for the higher wage penalty experienced by the more educated (who also tend to earn more), the total cost to this enlarged group more than doubles, to $70bn per year.

这些结果表明，美国超重工人承受的工资歧视的总成本是巨大的。假设您假设肥胖女性（而非男性）面临 7% 的工资罚金（我们样本中所有此类女性的平均工资），并且无论她们的教育水平如何，这都是相同的。粗略计算表明，它们每年的总成本约为 300 亿美元。但如果你考虑到男性面临的歧视，以及受教育程度较高的人（他们也往往挣得更多）所经历的更高工资惩罚，这个扩大的群体的总成本将增加一倍以上，达到每年 700 亿美元。

What can be done? Several cities, such as San Francisco and Washington, DC, already ban discrimination on the basis of appearance. A handful of states—including Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey and Vermont—are considering similar bills. The ban New York City began to enforce on November 22nd prohibits weight-based discrimination in employment, housing and public accommodation such as hotels and restaurants. Alas, it is unlikely to accomplish much. When we restricted our analysis to workers in Michigan, where a similar ban has been in place for nearly 50 years, we found the obesity wage penalty to be no lower than for America as a whole. Outlawing prejudice is one thing. Ironing it out of society is quite another. ■

可以做什么？旧金山和华盛顿特区等几个城市已经禁止基于外表的歧视。包括马萨诸塞州、纽约州、新泽西州和佛蒙特州在内的少数几个州正在考虑类似的法案。纽约市于 11 月 22 日开始实施的禁令禁止在就业、住房和酒店和餐馆等公共住宿领域基于体重的歧视。可惜的是，它不太可能取得多大成就。当我们将分析范围限制在密歇根州的工人时（那里类似的禁令已经实施了近 50 年），我们发现肥胖造成的工资损失并不低于整个美国。取缔偏见是一回事。将其排除在社会之外则是另一回事。