A(NOTHER) PIECE OF CAKE?

The recent rise in obesity rates in the Netherlands could be explained by a combination of technological innovation and time preferences. The decrease in food prices and the decline in the time costs of food preparation together with the preference of immediate utility over delayed utility might explain the recent obesity epidemic. In this paper, the possible relationship between obesity and time preferences for the Dutch population is examined. Two different samples (N=2138 and N=1236) using different measures of time preferences are used to determine whether BMI is related to time discounting. The results are ambiguous; the two samples show opposite outcomes for the OLS and logit regression, but the significant results do show that discounting more heavily indeed leads to a higher BMI. I can cautiously conclude that this is the first study with an all Dutch sample to demonstrate some sort of relationship between time preferences and obesity. However, alternative ways to measure impulsive behavior might be more efficient.