The obesity pay gap is worse than previously thought
So you definitely don’t want to read the comments on this one, but there’s a new study out showing just how bad weight discrimination in the work force can be.
I like how they examine how the impact intersects with class and gender (just men and women, with 23000 ppl in their sample, I’m 100% sure there were trans ppl, unless they were deliberately excluded)
tw: o word, lots of fatphobia in the comments.
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.
-Mod Siarl