Fat Discrimination

This is an ever growing list, so please check back and contact me with any new statistics or studies you'd like me to add.
  • According to a study done at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, the respect that a physician had for a patient directly correlated with their BMI. The heavier a patient was, the less respect the physician held for them. The implications of this are pretty serious as patients who have less respect from a physician tend to receive lower quality of care as well as less information. *1
  • "A study in the journal Health Economics that followed participants for 15 years found that the wages for obese females were on average 6.1 per cent lower and for obese males 3.4 per cent lower among people doing identical work." *2 According to the Washington Post this translates to fat women making $16,000 a year less and men making about $8,000 a year less. *3
  • "Overweight adolescents are more likely than normal-weight children to be victims and perpetrators of bullying, a study found, bolstering evidence that being fat endangers emotional as well as physical health. The results in a study of 5,749 Canadian youngsters echo data from British research and follow a U.S. study published last year in which obese children rated their quality of life as low as young cancer patients' because of teasing and weight-related health problems." *4
  • Surprisingly, according to a study in 2001, parents are less likely to help fat children with college compared with thin children, even controlling for income and grades.  *5
  • Fat airline customers can be forced to pay twice as much for tickets and that second seat that they're forced to buy can actually still be sold if the flight is otherwise full.*6 Canada, however, requires that every person only has to pay one fare. *7
  • Fat people can be charged extra for health care coverage, or even denied health care altogether if they weigh too much. This is under the assumption that fat people will cost you more because they're all unhealthy.Maybe I missed the memo but isn't the point of an insurance company to even out health care costs among an entire group? Maybe this is why they tend to kick sick people off their insurance. A health insurance company paying to make people healthy? Well that's just silly. *8
  •  Two researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health have made a recommendation in an opinion piece in the Journal of the American Medical Association suggestiong that state laws governing child abuse be employed to remove “extremely” fat children from their parents’ custody, and that these children be placed in foster care. *9 *10
  •  Male jurors are more likely to find women guilty, but only if they're fat, according to a study published in the International Journal of Obesity. Women judged other women equally regardless of weight and both men an women judged men equally regardless of weight. Only fat women were the victims of weight discrimination in this study. *11
  • The Boy Scouts of America discriminate against fat children based on their BMI. According to their website children with a BMI of over 40 cannot participate in the scout's jamboree. *12
  • Fat graduate school applicants are less likely to be accepted if they're fat and have in person interviews even if they're on equal footing as far as grades, test scores, and letters of recommendation.*13

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