Overweight people who trim down substantially may improve both their health and their wealth, if new
research is correct. The study, based on 15 years’ worth of data from a large US survey found that both
weight and weight changes were related to people’s net worth - their assets minus their debts.
2 In general, people with a normal Body Mass Index (BMI) had the highest net worth, and heavy people who
lost a significant amount of weight tended to see their wealth increase. Minor weight changes, on the other
hand, showed little financial effect.
3 The pattern was not neat, however. In particular, obese black men had a greater net worth than slimmer
black men, and over all, there was no clear association between BMI and wealth among African-American
males. In contrast, being thin helped white women‘s bottom lines the most, according to findings published
online by the journal Economics and Human Biology. A white women’s net worth peaked when her BMI was
Just above the threshold for “normal“, while that of white men and black women was greatest when their
BMI was at the higher end of normal.
4 White women also lost the most in terms of absolute dollars as BMI increased.
Similarly, women and white men tended to gain wealth after losing a large amount of weight. For example, a
typical white male who trimmed 10 points from his BMI - equivalent to a 6-foot-tIll male going from 250 to
175 pounds - had a wealth increase of $12,720. But again, black men differed in that their net worth dipped
slightly with such a drastic weight change.
5 The reasons for the racial and gender discrepancy are not clear - nor is there an easy explanation for the
relationship between weight and wealth, according to study author Jay Zagorsky, a researcher at Ohio State
University’s Centre for Human Resource Research in Columbus. .
6 A person’s body size does not seem to affect measures of wealth like capital gains made from stocks, he said,
and so it would appear that weight affects Income specifically. Other researchers have speculated that heavy
people may face discrimination in the workplace, which could lower their incomes. Obesity may also rise a
person’s spending, on obesity-related health conditions. (Reuters)
On the basis of your reading of the passage above complete the following short answer sentences with
appropriate words or phrases.
(a) Between what did the US survey bring out a strange relationship?
(b) What did the survey show in the case of obese black men?
(c) What did it mean if the BMI increased in the case of white women?
(d) What did Jay Zagorsky rule out?
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How can overweight people improve their health and wealth?
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