In China, there is no wage disparity for one classification of women but there is pay inequality among similarly classed men, according to a sociology presentation at the Annual Meeting of the American Sociological Association which analyzed economic disparity among obese Chinese adults.

What is the classification? Obese people. When men gain weight, they are penalized in wages compared to thinner men. With women, there is no difference.

The difference is most notable among obese manual laborers. For example, results showed that overweight professional workers made from 18.5 to 41.5 percent more than overweight manual laborers. The study was conducted by Chih-Chien Huang, who graduated recently from Arizona State University with a doctoral degree in sociology and Professor Jennie Kronenfeld of the ASU T. Denny Sanford School of Social and Family Dynamics. 

"Traditional perspectives that hold that female plumpness is a symbol of fertility and beauty are giving way to Western ideals such as fashion concepts that idealize thin body types as the country becomes increasingly urbanized. China has also been undergoing rapidly rising obesity rates since the late 1980s," Huang said. Changing societal relationships also influence China as the country shifts to a market-based economy that fosters interpersonal relationships with customers and colleagues as privately-owned industries increase, according to the paper.

Researchers had hypothesized that wage penalties would be found for women, in part because of changing ideals and workplace structure. However, they found that Chinese male manual laborers who were obese experienced wage disparities. Obese workers who were not in manual jobs did not have a pay penalty, due to the belief among many Chinese men that corpulence is considered a symbol of status and wealth, according to the researchers.

"Past studies on obesity's effects on wages suggest that there is negative association between body size and economic well-being in women, but past research on economic disparity among men has been mixed with some researchers stating that there is no association among men and body weight. Others suggest that wages may differ according to the jobs that are performed," Kronenfeld said.

Data for the study was taken from the China Health and Nutrition Survey, an ongoing longitudinal project that began in 1989 that includes data on health, nutrition and socioeconomic indicators. A subsample used for the study included 6,901 men and 5,103 women between the ages of 18-55 who were surveyed from 1991 to 2009.

Occupations were grouped by interactions in the workplace for the study in these categories: professional employees who have a higher level of interaction with colleagues such as doctors, teachers and actors; service workers who also have many interactions with colleagues or customers such as office staffers, housekeepers, cooks and police officers; and manual laborers who require minimal interaction such as farmers, hunters and laborers.

Manual laborers fared the worst in the study regarding wage disparity with obese professional workers making 18.5 to 41.5 percent more than manual laborers, overweight professionals earning 9.3 to 13.9 percent more and overweight service workers making 9.3 to 11.8 percent more than manual laborers.

Because obesity affects quality of life, sick leave and workplace productivity, there is an urgent need to understand the underlying mechanism by which social factors contribute to rapidly growing obesity rates. Once causes are understood, effective intervention strategies can be developed to lessen the high economic burden of obesity in the developing world, according to the researchers.