This article is about a study that used monetary incentives for people to lose weight. It turns out that when people are being paid to lose weight, they lose a lot more. There were three groups. One group had a lottery that they could win only if they met their weight loss targets. The second group deposited their own money and only got it back at the end of the month if weight loss goals were met. The third group was a control. The first group made about $380 and lost 13 pounds, the second group made about $275 and lost 14 pounds. The control group only lost 4 pounds.
As Dr. Gitter always says, people respond to incentives.
6 comments:
EVERYTHING is easier when you are going to get paid for it, I swear.
Nice plug with Dr. Gitter, if I haven't remembered anything else from his Labor class the one thing I know that I took out of that was that people do respond to incentives.
I agree, when you have a monetary incentive to lose weight obviously you will work much harder. But with obesity becoming a major problem in the U.S people need to worry more about having good health as an incentive. Everyone cant get paid to lose weight, and it is a huge problem. I heard Columbus, OH is one of the fattest city's in the country! Maybe they need to cut down on some of the thousands of fast food chains around every corner....
People can do just about anything if the incentives are right. Gitter's favorite saying is that "people respond to incentives" and it is true. I think that this is a good policy to implement. If we decreased our weight in the U.S., studies have shown that we would spend less on Health Care, are more productive, etc. which in turn would boost the economy.
So it might have been better if the US government pay a certain amount of money to those who lose weight instead of spending on government weight loss program? But people are always finding "smarter" ways to abuse things. What if people get fat on purpose and lose weight just for the money? hehe
I wonder if this is true for other things like grades and such. I never got paid for getting good grades in high school, but I had friends who would get like 20 bones for an A or whatever. Now that I'm in college and absolutely broke, I really wish my mom would pay me for good grades so I don't fail most egregiously.
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