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KMID : 1170320150210040063
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Korean Journal of Health Economics and Policy
2015 Volume.21 No. 4 p.63 ~ p.95
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The Effect of Obesity in the Recruiting Market: The Case of Young Korean College Graduates
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Yang Hae-Kyung
Kim Jin-Yeong
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Abstract
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This paper investigates the relationship between obesity and the employment using a unique data set composed of young Korean college graduate cohort who graduated high school in the same year, 2004. The salient feature of this study is in addition to examining the relationship between obesity and the employment, we look closely at the relationship between the obesity and the effort to be recruited. If there is a general adverse assessment or prejudice towards the obese in the labor market, obese job seekers may try to overcome this prejudice by putting extra effort on activities as extra job training, getting licences, language training in the foreign countries. The empirical results indicate that contrary to this intuition, obese students tend to make less effort to be employed, with an exception of overweight male students. Overweight male students are more likely to make more efforts in oversea language training or job training, but they do not show good performances in the recruiting market. In case of female students, overweight and obese students generally make less efforts than normal weight students, and obese female students are less likely to be employed. Our results are consistent with previous studies that report adverse effect of obesity in the labor market. Our study contributes to the literature by looking at the effect of obesity in both job market preparation and employment. Our results imply that obesity has on-going effect on academic performance, job market preparation and employment and the adverse effect of obesity can be explained by individual’s cognitive skills and unobserved aspects rather than discrimination in the job market.
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KEYWORD
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obesity, employment, job market preparation
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