Search

International audience; Cet article étudie les dynamiques de la relation entre la corpulence et les salaires au Mexique, un pays émergent fortement touché par l’obésité. Dans cette étude empirique, nous utilisons les données de panel issues de l’enquête ménage Mexican Family Life Survey (2002-2012). Premièrement, nous examinons de façon descriptive la relation corpulence-salaire et son évolution dans le temps. Nous appliquons ensuite un modèle par doubles différences fournissant des estimations robustes à l’hétérogénéité invariante dans le temps. Nos résultats montrent que la relation entre la corpulence et les salaires horaires dépend du genre, de l’année d’enquête et du statut professionnel. Tandis que les résultats révèlent des pénalités salariales au cours du temps pour les travailleurs des services en surpoids, nous observons une acceptation relative de l’excès de poids dans d’autres secteurs d’emploi, en particulier dans les emplois à haute qualification. Nos résultats ont ainsi des implications importantes en termes de politiques publiques.

International audience; Recent studies reported that the age of primary school enrolment is a major driver of educational achievement and adult income, but its impacts on childhood health and nutrition remain largely unknown, particularly in developing countries where childhood stunting and overweight coexist. In Brazil, children are supposed to enrol in primary school the year they turn 6. Using a database of middle school students in Brazil based on a 2015 survey, I implemented an instrumental variables strategy using quasi-exogenous variations in the students' birthdates to isolate the impact of late primary school enrolment (i.e., older than 6 when enrolled) on height-forage and body mass-forage indicators. Overall, late enrolment has protective effects against hazardous weight gain (− 0.14 z-score unit) but significantly increases the risk of moderate stunting (by 1.5% points). Heterogeneity in family backgrounds may explain these results. Indeed, delayed school enrolment is particularly detrimental for the nutritional status of students from underprivileged settings. In terms of public policy, rather than changing school starting age, this study highlights the importance of focusing on pathways to fight both stunting and overweight conditions in Brazilian children.

The current economic growth and increase in urbanization has led to the adoption of new lifestyles in middle-income countries such as Mexico. Associated with overweight, obesity and chronic diseases, the nutrition transition process reveals important socioeconomic issues. Using panel data from the Mexican Family Life Survey, the purpose of the study is to estimate causal effects of household socioeconomic status (SES) on nutritional outcomes among Mexican adults from urban areas. We divide the analysis into two steps. First, using a mixed clustering procedure, we distinguish four socioeconomic classes based on income, education and occupation dimensions: (i) a poor class; (ii) a lower-middle class; (iii) an upper-middle class; (iv) a rich class. Second, using an econometric framework adapted to our study (the Hausman-Taylor estimator), we measure the impact of belonging to these socioeconomic groups on individual anthropometric indicators, based on the body-mass index (BMI) and the waist-to-height ratio (WHtR). Our results make several contributions: (i) we show that a new middle class, rising out of poverty, is the most exposed to central adiposity; (ii) as individuals from the upper class seem to be fatter than individuals from the upper-middle class, we can reject the assumption of an inverted U-shaped relationship between socioeconomic and anthropometric status as commonly suggested in emerging economies; (iii) the influence of SES on anthropometric indicators appears to be particularly strong for men.