TY - BOOK AU - Han,Euna AU - Norton,Edward C. AU - Powell,Lisa M. ED - National Bureau of Economic Research. TI - Direct and Indirect Effects of Teenage Body Weight on Adult Wages T2 - NBER working paper series PY - 2009/// CY - Cambridge, Mass. PB - National Bureau of Economic Research N1 - June 2009; Hardcopy version available to institutional subscribers N2 - Previous estimates on the association between body weight and wages in the literature have been contingent on education and occupation. This paper examines the direct effect of BMI on wages and the indirect effects operating through education and occupation choice, particularly for late-teen BMI and adult wages. Using the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 data, we show that education is the main pathway for the indirect BMI wage penalty. The total BMI wage penalty is underestimated by 18% for women without including those indirect effects. Whereas for men there is no statistically significant direct BMI wage penalty, we do observe a small indirect wage penalty through education UR - https://www.nber.org/papers/w15027 UR - http://dx.doi.org/10.3386/w15027 ER -