Overview
John Cawley is a Cornell University health economist whose research focuses on the economics of obesity, food policy, and the labor market consequences of body weight. He is a leading contributor to the empirical literature on how obesity affects economic outcomes including earnings, employment, and disability.
Key Contributions
- Obesity and DI causality (Burkhauser and Cawley 2004): Co-authored the first IV-based study linking obesity to disability insurance receipt; used biological relative's weight as an instrument to show OLS massively underestimates the causal effect (5–15× attenuation); 2SLS estimates show obesity raises DI receipt by 5–9 pp.
- Body weight and women's labor market outcomes (Cawley 2000): Pioneering work using biological siblings as instruments for body weight to estimate causal effects on wages; found significant wage penalties for obesity among white women in NLSY79.
Related
Sources