Social interactions and the contemporaneous determinants of individuals’ weight

Obesity and overweight are central issues in the public health debate in most developed countries. In this debate, some of the socio-economic determinants of obesity and overweight are still relatively unexplored. This paper presents an empirical examination of the possible influence of social interactions on contemporaneous obesity and (over)underweight. A joint estimation model for obesity and self-image is applied to a sample for Spain taken from the European Union household panel for 1998. The results suggest that obesity might be in part a social phenomenon connected to individuals’ social life.