Obesity, Poverty and Income Inequality in USA: Evidence from Panel Cointegration and Mixed Model Methodology

Abstract

Over the past several decades, obesity has grown into a major global epidemic. Obesity in the United States is widely acknowledged to be a severe and growing problem. In this paper, economic costs of obesity are discussed with an emphasis on healthcare costs, as obesity is perhaps among the largest contributing factor to high costs of health care in America. Stemming the obesity epidemic cannot be separated from stemming the tide of poverty and income inequality gap. In this study, we used panel cointegration test using data from 1998-2012 and our results suggests that there is a long-run relationship among obesity, inequality and poverty.