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Science Give me the money and I'll lose weight
Science Give me the money and I'll lose weight | Give me the money and I'll lose weight |
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| by William Atkins | |
| Monday, 05 January 2009 | |
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Page 3 of 3 The researchers found that the people in the control group only lost an average of 3.9 pounds. Featured Whitepaper
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Science DiscussionsForty-seven percent of the people in the deposit contract group met their goal, while 52.6% in the lottery group meet their goal. However, in the control group, only 10.5% of the participants met their 16-pound target. The researchers concluded that people lost more weight during the sixteen-week period when they were offered money (in the lottery and deposit contract groups) than the people who were on standard weight-loss plans. According to the abstract of the researchers’ paper, “The use of economic incentives produced significant weight loss during the 16 weeks of intervention that was not fully sustained. The longer-term use of incentives should be evaluated.” However, the researchers also found that the people put back the weight after the money incentives were discontinued. Although further research is needed, it might be prudent to offer financial incentives for people to lose weight, especially with the large percentages of people being overweight and obese in many industrialized countries of the world such as the United States and Australia (two of the countries with the highest percentages of overweight people). The American authors are from the: • Center for Health Equity Research and Promotion, Philadelphia Veterans Affairs Medical Center, Philadelphia (Volpp and Norton) • Center for Health Incentives, Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics (Volpp, Troxel, Loewenstein, and Norton) • Department of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine (Volpp and Norton) • Department of Health Care Management, the Wharton School (Volpp) • Center for Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics and Department of Biostatistics and Epidemiology, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia (Troxel and Fassbender) • Department of Social and Decision Sciences, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh (Loewenstein and John) |
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