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Obesity (Poster Session)

(P20-064-25) The Effects of Long Working Hours on Obesity Among American Adults

Sunday, June 1, 2025
12:45 PM - 1:45 PM ET
Location: Poster Board D-51

    Presenting Author(s)

  • XW

    Xiaoqi Wang, Doctoral

    Ph.D. Student
    University of Massachusetts Amherst
    amherst, Massachusetts, United States

    • Co-Author(s)

  • CD

    Chengyu Du

    University of Massachusetts Amherst, United States

  • CY

    Chenxi Yuan

    University of Massachusetts Amherst, United States

Disclosure(s):
Xiaoqi Wang, Doctoral: No relevant financial relationship(s) with ineligible companies to disclose.


Objectives: Obesity, linked to chronic diseases like diabetes and cardiovascular issues, is influenced by socioeconomic, lifestyle, and demographic factors. Long working hours may contribute by reducing physical activity, disrupting diets, and increasing stress. Using NHIS data (2010–2018) with 28,350 responses, this study examines the relationship between working hours and obesity, focusing on private and government employees. We hypothesize that longer working hours increase BMI, with sex and race moderating this effect.

Methods: To ensure robust evaluation, the dataset is split into training and testing subsets. A random 25% sample (7,000 cases) is used for model development, while the remaining 75% is reserved for testing to evaluate predictive accuracy and effectiveness.

BMIi = β0 +10∑j=1 βjXj,i+εi,  εi~Ν(0, σ2y)
BMIi = β0 +8∑j=1 βjXj,i+β9X9,i+β10X10,i+β11X9,iX10,i+εi,  εi~Ν(0, σ2y)
BMIi = β0 +8∑j=1 βjXj,i+U0,k[i]+U1,k[i]X3,i+εi,⌈u0 u1⌉∼ N (0, Σ), εi~Ν(0, σ2y)

Results: Men are more likely to overwork than women. Among overworking groups ( >49 hours), multiracial men (33.72%) and White men (28.49%) have the highest probabilities, while Black women (11.20%) and Asian women (12.12%) have the lowest.

Baseline BMI is highest in Native American men (31.46), Black women (30.70), and Black men (29.90), and lowest in Asian women (26.50) and Asian men (27.32). These differences may be influenced by unmeasured confounders like occupational types, dietary habits, and physiology.

Groups at higher risk of BMI increase under overworking ( >60 hours) include Asian American men (1.08), Asian American women (1.30), multiracial men (1.33), multiracial women (0.93), and White women (1.03).

Conclusions: Due to computational constraints, we reduced the training set size, which affected model precision and increased sensitivity to outliers. BMI, developed using data from primarily white men, lacks accuracy across different racial, ethnic, and gender groups. It also fails to account for fat distribution and muscle mass, misclassifying muscular individuals as overweight.

Funding Sources: N/A