Obesity may not only be linked to undesirable health outcomes but also to limitations in sexual life. The present paper aims to assess whether there is a causal relationship between weight loss and sexual activity in adult obese individuals. To address the endogeneity of weight loss that is likely to result in biased estimation results, the analysis is based on data from a randomized field experiment.
In this experiment, financial weight-loss rewards were offered to a random subgroup of participants and can be used as an exogenous source of weight variation in an instrumental variables approach. Estimation results indicate that for obese males losing weight, both the probability of being involved in a sexual relationship and the frequency of sexual intercourse increases. The same pattern of results is found when pooling both sexes in the sample.
Due to the small share of women in the sample, the analysis yields no reliable results specifically for females. A close link between a fulfilling sex life and general life satisfaction is well documented in the literature e. Woloski-Wruble et al. A growing body of literature also demonstrates that a higher frequency of sexual activity is associated with better health.
For example, Kloner et al. Impairments in sexual life thus are likely to have a strong negative impact on individual happiness and life satisfaction and likewise deteriorate the general health condition. One possible reason for limitations in sexual life is obesity; see Larsen et al. Though the majority of analyses reviewed by Larsen et al. Rowland et al. The non-medical, health economics oriented literature has taken a very different view on the link of body weight to sexual life.
This relatively small literature Ali et al. For female adolescents, Sabia and Rees find a causal and detrimental effect of early sexual intercourse on psychological well-being. Ali et al. The contribution of the present paper is to i conduct an analysis focusing on adult individuals, for whom the above line of argument does not apply and whose sexual behavior, most likely, differs from the behavior of the age group studied by the literature cited above. Unlike the majority of the medical literature, our focus is ii on self-reported sexual activity rather than specific sexual dysfunctions such as erectile dysfunction.
