Nothing Special   »   [go: up one dir, main page]
IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/fau/wpaper/wp2021_33.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Social Costs of Obesity in the Czech Republic

Author

Listed:
  • Petra Landovska

    (Institute of Economic Studies, Faculty of Social Sciences, Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic)

Abstract
Increasing prevalence of obesity is a pressing public health issue in the Czech Republic as well as world-wide, affecting up to 2.1 billion people. In the Czech Republic, 20-25% of adults and an increasing number of children are obese now. Given that obesity is a chronic disease which is associated with several serious comorbidities, it generates large social costs. The main aim of this study was to estimate both direct and indirect costs of obesity in the Czech Republic. Social costs of obesity are estimated using the cost-of-illness approach. Population attributable fractions (PAF) are computed based on prevalence of obesity in the Czech Republic and relative risks of 19 comorbidities. Direct costs (healthcare utilization costs and costs of pharmacotherapy) are estimated using the top-down approach, while indirect costs (absenteeism, presenteeism and premature mortality) are estimated using the human capital approach. In aggregate, the annual costs attributable to obesity in the Czech Republic in 2018 were 37.3 billion CZK (1.5 billion EUR). Direct costs were 13.1 billion CZK (0.5 billion EUR) and accounted for 3% of Czech healthcare expenditures. The highest healthcare utilization costs were attributable to type II diabetes (21.7%), ischemic heart disease (18.4%) and osteoarthritis (16.9%). The largest indirect costs were attributable to premature mortality (9.2 billion CZK/0.36 billion EUR), absenteeism (8.7 billion CZK/0.34 billion EUR) and presenteeism (6.3 billion CZK/0.25 billion EUR). This report demonstrates that obesity is a serious problem with considerable costs. Several preventive interventions should be applied in order to decrease the prevalence of obesity and achieve cost savings.

Suggested Citation

  • Petra Landovska, 2021. "Social Costs of Obesity in the Czech Republic," Working Papers IES 2021/33, Charles University Prague, Faculty of Social Sciences, Institute of Economic Studies, revised Oct 2021.
    • Handle: RePEc:fau:wpaper:wp2021_33
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://ies.fsv.cuni.cz/en/veda-vyzkum/working-papers/6529
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Keywords

    obesity; social costs; cost-of-illness study; Czech Republic;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • I12 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Health Behavior
    • I18 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Government Policy; Regulation; Public Health

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:fau:wpaper:wp2021_33. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Natalie Svarcova (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/icunicz.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.