An empirical investigation of a weight-wage penalty due to taste-based discrimination in Australia

Abstract

We measure the weight-weight penalty faced by employed adults in Australia by using the HILDA dataset and decompose this into justified (productivity based) and unjustified (taste-based) discrimination at both the hiring stage and after employment is atained. We find evidence that a taste-based penalty on pay is placed upon obese workers, which is larger for men and smaller for women. Our result is subject to which subsample of our penal we study.