Earnings and overweight in Russia: Men and women

Applied Econometrics. 2025. No. 4(80). P. 47–67.

Deeva A.

This paper investigates the influence of Body-Mass-Index (BMI) on the earnings of men and women. The aim is to identify weight — wage discrimination in the Russian labour market, which results in overweight and obese people earning significantly less than normal weight workers. The study is conducted using a panel dataset from the Russian Longitudinal Monitoring Survey (RLMS–HSE), collected by HSE University, which covers individuals from 2013 to 2023, and Rosstat regional-level data for the corresponding years. Based on the re sults, we can conclude that being overweight leads to a decrease in wages for female employ ees, but does not appear to affect the wages of male employees. The industry of occupation plays a role in determining the presence and degree of wage reduction of overweight women in Russia. The largest earnings penalty due to extra weight is found for women employed in construction, education, trade, and consumer services industries. The size of the earn ings reduction, following a one-point increase in BMI, varies from 3 to 9%. In industries such as transportation, agriculture, management, finance, and the energy sector, no sign of a weight–wage association is detected.

Keywords: ожирение, obesity, отрасль, industry, эндогенность, endogeneity, instrumental variables method, heteroscedastic errors, метод инструментальных переменных, гетероскедастичные остатки

Publication based on the results of: The Impact of External Shocks and Restrictions on the Strategies of Economic Agents in the Context of the New Reality (2025)