2026-07-10
29 分钟Most people know that in the Western world, richer people tend to be thinner.
What they don't always know is that the difference is driven largely by women.
Crunching the numbers, I calculated that obesity rates among the poorest
third of American women were 14 percentage points higher than for the richest third.
For men, the gap was under a percentage point.
This raises some fascinating questions.
Does a lower income make you heavier?
Does being heavy make you poorer?
And why might the answers be different for women?
Economists have been struggling to find concrete answers for decades.
But now, as we find ourselves in the middle of a weight loss revolution, they are making some headway.
I'm, of course, talking about GLP-1 drugs like Manjaro and Wegovi.
Just this week, the first pill version became available in the UK.
With uptake of these drugs increasing,
and they're overwhelmingly used by women, what can we learn about the economics of women's weight?
This is The Economics Show with Samaya Keynes.
This week, I spoke to Rebecca Diamond,
professor of economics at Harvard University and author of a new study on the effects of GLP-1 drugs.
But before we hear from her, I'm joined by my fantastic colleague, Claire Barrett, the FT's consumer editor.
Claire, hello.