Overweight women earn less than overweight men

The more overweight a woman, the more likely she is to work a low-paying job, according to a new study. Photo / Thinkstock

Women are more likely to work in lower paying jobs as they become heavier. Not so for men, a US study shows.

The American workforce is particularly unkind to heavier women.

The more overweight a woman, the more likely she is to work a low-paying job, according to a new study by the Vanderbilt Law School. And that contrasts with overweight men, for whom the correlation isn't nearly as strong.

"For women there's this really clear pattern," said Jennifer Shinall, the study's author.

"Starting when a woman is overweight, she's less likely to work in what's known as a personal interaction job, which tends to pay better. And it only gets worse from there - morbidly obese women are the least likely to work those jobs."

The study is the most recent in a long line of research about the relationship between obesity and pay. Some of the more notable studies, including one carried out by Professor John Cawley at Cornell University in 2004, have found that weight is indeed inversely related to pay.

But this most recent data dive, which controls for other factors, including demographics, finds that being overweight is a far greater disadvantage for women than it is for men.

To gauge the way that a worker's weight correlates with his or her pay, Shinall used data from the American Time and Use Survey and Current Population Survey. Doing so allowed for a comparison between job types and weight types.

Specifically, the study focused on how male and female weight classes - normal-weight, overweight, obese, and morbidly obese - correlated with one of two job types: personal interaction jobs and physical activity jobs. Personal interaction jobs, which include sales and communications positions, tend to be higher paying than average; physical activity jobs, which include home health aid, day care and food preparation positions, tend to be just the opposite.

Women, the data showed, are increasingly less likely to work the higher paying jobs and increasingly more likely to work the lower paying jobs as they become heavier. Men, on the other hand, see no such gradual effect. "No matter the occupation, obese men seem to do just as well" as normal-weight men," Shinall said. "That's just not the case for obese women."

The reasons for the disproportionate effect that women's weight appears to have on their employment are unclear. Beauty, or attractiveness, have long been tied to better pay, both among men and women. Everything from one's height to one's hair colour and fitness have been found to affect one's career. Economist Daniel Hamermesh, who is well-versed on the topic, has written a book about the correlation between attractiveness and compensation, appropriately titled Beauty Pays: Why Attractive People are More Successful.

The role that appearance plays in determining one's pay, while present for sexes, has in some cases been proven to be more pronounced for men than women, at least by Hamermesh. But in many others, it's been the reverse, said Shinall.

"There's been quite a bit of research in the more general appearance context that suggests a woman's appearance is more important on the job than a man's," she said.

There's also the possibility that this particular gender pay gap is an extension of the more general pay gap that persists between men and women in the United States, which has been as pronounced as it has been persistent.

In this particular case, it's reasonable to think that the selection process for consumer-facing jobs is what puts heavier women at a disadvantage. "I suspect that employers are not hiring heavier women for these types of jobs because of either their own preferences, or what they perceive to be the preferences of their customers," Shinall said.

"Employers might not want heavier women to be the face of their company or simply the person who interacts with their customers." The physical activity jobs, meanwhile, which tend to be lower-paying and less pleasant, might be the only kind that are available to many overweight, obese and, especially, morbidly obese women.