Even as you mourn the post-Thanksgiving puffiness, obesity trackers show that where you live may have something to do with whether you're fat or thin.
Take Colorado, for example: thin people, low incidence of heart disease, cerebrovascular disease, smoking, and a high sense of well-being. Other markers of a state's health include more immigrants, artists, and gays.
If you live in Kentucky, don't continue to read this. Make your Final Arrangements now.
Common sense would suggest that more affluent people would have lower levels of obesity and poorer ones higher, and we find such an association. Obesity is correlated with income levels (-.6) and more moderately so with economic output, measured as gross state product per capita (-.4).
One would think that states with greater concentrations of more highly educated people have lower levels of obesity, and that is what we find. States with higher levels of human capital, measured as the percentage of adults with a college degree, have lower levels of obesity (the correlation being -.8).
To what extent does obesity reflect the kind of work people do? We examine the relationships between obesity and three classes of jobs - creative/professional/knowledge jobs, blue-collar working class jobs, and standardized service class jobs like those in food processing and home health care. Obesity is strongly associated with the share of working class jobs (with a correlation of .7). Obesity is negatively correlated with the share of creative class jobs (-.6). Obesity is also negatively correlated with the share of service class jobs (-.4), though more moderately so.
Obesity is lower in states with higher concentrations of artists, musicians, and entertainers (with a correlation of-.6), those with larger concentrations of gays and lesbians (-.5), and immigrants (-.5). This likely reflects broader structural characteristics of those states, as more highly educated states also tend to be more tolerant and open to diversity.
Update: Another big plus for Colorado. According to NPR (11/30/09), Colorado has just passed a law outlawing texting while driving. That should lower the state's death rate a bunch.
