【每天一篇经济学人】Workplace discrimination 工作场所歧

文章来源：《经济学人》Nov 25th 2023 期 Finance & economics 栏目 Workplace discrimination 工作场所歧视

文章主题：体重肥胖会面临哪些社会歧视？男女均受影响，受过良好教育的人受影响更大。

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Obese people experience discrimination in many parts of their lives, and the workplace is no exception. Studies have long shown that obese workers, defined as those with a body-mass index (BMI) of 30 or more, earn significantly less than their slimmer counterparts. In America, several state and local governments are contemplating laws against this treatment. On November 22nd, one such ban came into force in New York City.

肥胖人士在生活的方方面面都遭受歧视，工作场所也不例外。长期以来，许多研究表明，BMI指数达到30及以上的肥胖员工的收入显著低于体型更苗条的同事。在美国，一些州和地方政府正在考虑制定法律来反对待遇歧视。11 月 22 日，纽约市一项反歧视禁令生效。

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Yet the costs of weight discrimination may be even greater than previously thought. “The overwhelming evidence,” wrote the Institute for Employment Studies, a British think-tank, in a recent report, “is that it is only women living with obesity who experience the obesity wage penalty.” They were expressing a view that is widely aired in academic papers. To test it, The Economist has analysed data concerning 23,000 workers from the American Time Use Survey, conducted by the Bureau of Labour Statistics. Our number-crunching suggests that, in fact, being obese hurts the earnings of both women and men.

然而，体重歧视的代价可能比以前想象的还要大。英国智库“就业研究所”在最近的一份报告中写道："大量证据表明，只有肥胖女性才会遭受薪资歧视。这种观点在学术论文中广为流传。为了验证这一观点，本报分析了美国劳工统计局的《美国人时间使用调查》数据，其中包含2.3万名工人的数据。我们的数据分析表明，实际上，肥胖对男女员工的收入都有不利影响。

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The data we analysed cover men and women aged between 25 and 54 and in full-time employment. At an aggregate level, it is true that men’s BMIs are unrelated to their wages. But that changes for men with university degrees. For them, obesity is associated with a wage penalty of nearly 8%, even after accounting for the separate effects of age, race, graduate education and marital status. When we re-ran our analysis, using a different dataset that covers nearly 90,000 people, from the Department of Health and Human Services, we got similar results.

我们分析的数据涵盖了25-54岁的全职男女。从总体上看，男性的体质指数与工资无关。但对于拥有大学学位的男性来说，情况就不同了。对他们来说，即使考虑了年龄、种族、研究生学历和婚姻状况的单独影响，肥胖也会给他们带来近 8% 的工资损失。当我们对卫生与公众服务部提供的近9万人的数据集进行重新分析时，我们得到了类似的结果。

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The conclusion—that well-educated workers in particular are penalised for their weight—holds for both sexes. Moreover, the higher your level of education, the greater the penalty. We found that obese men with a bachelor’s degree earn 5% less than their thinner colleagues, while those with a graduate degree earn 14% less. Obese women, it is true, still have it worse: for them, the equivalent figures are 12% and 19%, respectively.

我们得出结论——受过良好教育的人尤其会因为体重而受到不利影响——对男女都适用。而且，受教育程度越高，肥胖导致的不利影响就越大。我们发现，拥有学士学位的肥胖男性比身材更瘦的同事薪资低5％，而拥有研究生学位的肥胖男性薪资会低14％。对于肥胖女性，情况还要更糟：对她们来说，相应的数字分别是12％和19％。

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Your line of work makes a difference, too. When we crunched the numbers for individual occupations and industries, we found the greatest disparities in high-skilled jobs. Obese workers in health care, for example, make 11% less than their slimmer colleagues; those in management roles make roughly 9% less, on average. In sectors such as construction and agriculture, meanwhile, obesity is actually associated with higher wages.

所从事的工作类型也会造成薪资差异。当我们计算各个职业和行业的数据时，我们发现高技能工作中的薪资差距最大。例如，医疗保健行业的肥胖员工的收入比苗条同事低 11%；而管理岗位上，平均低9％左右。而在建筑和农业等行业中，肥胖实际上与更高的工资有关。

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These results suggest that the aggregate costs of wage discrimination borne by overweight workers in America are hefty. Suppose you assume that obese women, but not men, face a wage penalty of 7% (the average across all such women in our sample) and that this is the same regardless of their level of education. Then a back-of-the-envelope calculation suggests that they bear a total cost of some $30bn a year. But if you account for both the discrimination faced by men, and for the higher wage penalty experienced by the more educated (who also tend to earn more), the total cost to this enlarged group more than doubles, to $70bn per year.

这些结果表明，美国超重工人所承受的工资歧视的总成本是很高的。假设肥胖女性（而非男性）面临 7% 的工资损失（我们样本中所有此类女性的平均工资），并且无论她们的教育水平如何都是相同的。那么粗略计算，肥胖女性每年要承受约 300 亿美元的损失代价。但如果考虑到男性面临的歧视，以及受过更高教育（也会赚更多钱）面临更多的薪资损失等因素，那么肥胖男性承受的损失代价将翻倍，达到每年700亿美元。

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What can be done? Several cities, such as San Francisco and Washington, DC, already ban discrimination on the basis of appearance. A handful of states—including Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey and Vermont—are considering similar bills. The ban New York City began to enforce on November 22nd prohibits weight-based discrimination in employment, housing and public accommodation such as hotels and restaurants. Alas, it is unlikely to accomplish much.When we restricted our analysis to workers in Michigan, where a similar ban has been in place for nearly 50 years, we found the obesity wage penalty to be no lower than for America as a whole. Outlawing prejudice is one thing. Ironing it out of society is quite another.

该怎么办呢？旧金山和华盛顿特区等几个城市已经立法禁止外貌歧视。马萨诸塞州、纽约州、新泽西州和佛蒙特州等少数几个州正在考虑类似的反歧视法案。纽约市从11月22日开始实施的反体重歧视的法规，禁止在就业、住房和公共场所（如酒店和餐馆）的体重歧视行为。然而，禁令收效甚微。当我们分析密歇根州的工人时（那里类似的禁令已经实施了近 50 年），结果发现肥胖薪酬损失并不低于全美国的水平。禁止歧视是一回事，但消除社会的歧视根源是另外一回事。