Tag Archives: denmark

Obesity less dangerous than 40 years ago

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May 11, 2016

New research from Denmark involving more than 100,000 individuals suggests that the excess risk of premature death associated with obesity has decreased over the past 40 years. All-cause mortality was higher in obese individuals than in normal weight individuals in 1976-78, but not in 2003-13.

Many try to lose weight to avoid diabetes and cardiovascular disease and hopefully live longer. This is often driven by recommendations from health care authorities and is further supported by the media and not least, by commercials often presenting normal weight or even thin people as ideal humans.

“The increased risk of all-cause mortality associated with obesity compared to normal weight decreased from 30% 1976-78 to 0% in 2003-13,” says principal investigator Dr. Shoaib Afzal, Herlev Hospital, Copenhagen University Hospital, Denmark.

This research has just been published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA).

What is the optimal BMI for lowest mortality?

The study also revealed changes in the BMI associated with the lowest all-cause mortality in three cohorts from Copenhagen, examined respectively in 1976-78, 1991-1994, and in 2003-2013 (all individuals were followed until 2014).

“The optimal BMI for the lowest mortality increased from 23.7 in 1976-78, through 24.6 in 1991-94, to 27 in 2003-13, while individuals with a BMI below or above the optimal value had higher mortality,” adds Shoaib Afzal.

“Compared to the 1970’s, today’s overweight individuals have lower mortality than so-called normal weight individuals. The reason for this change is unknown. However, these results would indicate a need to revise the categories presently used to define overweight, which are based on data from before the 1990’s” says senior author Clinical Professor Borge G. Nordestgaard, University of Copenhagen and Copenhagen University Hospital.

“Importantly, our results should not be interpreted as suggesting that now people can eat as much as they like, or that so-called normal weight individuals should eat more to become overweight. That said, maybe overweight people need not be quite as worried about their weight as before”, adds Nordestgaard.

Obesity and overweight are classified using Body Mass Index (BMI), calculated as weight in kilograms divided by height in meters squared. A BMI of 25-29.9 represents overweight, a BMI of 30 or greater represents obesity, while a BMI of 18.5-24.9 is considered normal weight. These categories are often used for recommendations on optimum weight.

Source: University of Copenhagen The Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences

Source: Obesity less dangerous than 40 years ago | Science Codex

The U.S. has a $7.25 minimum wage. Australia’s is $16.88

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By Dylan Matthews, Published: August 19 http://www.washingtonpost.com

Minimum wage advocates love to point to Australia’s $16.88 an hour minimum as evidence that a very high wage floor needn’t stifle a country’s growth. After all, Australia hasn’t had a recession in 20 years. But Australia is hardly an outlier. Most developed countries have a higher minimum wage than we do, as this chart from Business Insider’s Matthew Boesler — using data from the ConvergEx Group — shows:

minimum_wages_around_world

This holds up if you compare the minimums to the median wage in the country in question, as the OECD did. Here’s what they found:

minimum_wage_comparison

The U.S., unsurprisingly, is on the bottom but it’s tied with Japan. And Australia isn’t on top; that goes to France, which has a lower average wage than Australia, which makes up for a lower minimum wage and leads to a higher ratio.

The Center for American Progress has proposed setting the minimum wage at half the average wage (mean, not median as used above) for production and non-supervisory workers; at the current level, that means a $10.07 minimum. If we were to adopt France’s 60 percent ratio, that’d put us at about $12.08.

Of course, there are all kinds of pros and cons to that kind of increase. I went through many of them here. And it’s worth noting that Australia’s minimum wage comes with all kinds of exceptions, especially for younger workers.

Update: Another point, which Guan Yang reminded me of on Twitter – a large number of countries, including Denmark, Germany, Italy, Norway, Singapore, Sweden, and Switzerland, don’t have minimum wages at all. Most of them make up for it with widespread collective bargaining, which sets de facto minimums.