Excess weight, unhealthy diet and insufficient physical activity are major risk factors for many diseases, which in turn affect the economy and wellbeing. Understanding the impact of these risk factors can help governments make the case for investing in prevention. The OECD analyses the impact of risk factors on life expectancy, premature mortality, health spending, workforce productivity and wider societal wellbeing, producing country-specific data and international comparisons.
Key links
Obesity, diet and physical activity
Excess weight, diet and physical activity are major risk factors that can lead to conditions such as cardiovascular disease, cancer and diabetes, among others. Policies to address these can therefore benefit population health, reduce healthcare spending, increase workforce productivity and improve overall societal wellbeing. However, it is important to select the most cost-effective policies to achieve maximum impact for minimal cost.
Key messages
There is a strong economic case to invest in policies to reduce excess weight, improve diets and increase physical activity. The OECD analyses a wide range of policy options to determine their impact and their cost-effectiveness. OECD analysis has found that every dollar spent on preventing obesity can generate economic gains up to six times that amount.
A wide range of policy options exist to reduce excess weight, improve diets and increase physical activity. However, as behaviours are influenced by many different factors, investing in comprehensive policy packages has a greater impact than implementing single policies in isolation.
Context
Obesity rates
Being overweight or obese is a major risk factor for various non-communicable diseases, including diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, and certain cancers.
In most OECD countries that collect self-reported body height and weight data, more than half of adults were overweight or obese. On average across 32 OECD countries, 54% of the adult population were overweight or obese, and 18% were obese in 2021. Men were more likely than women to be overweight or obese in all countries. The gender gap was particularly large in Luxembourg, Germany and the Czechia, a difference of 19-20 percentage points .
Health spending
Since being overweight and obesity are major risk factors that can lead to several non-communicable diseases such as diabetes and cancer, people who are clinically overweight generally require health care services more often and for more complicated issues.
As a result, annual healthcare cost across OECD countries are USD 209 (PPP) per capita higher due to people being overweight or obese.
In total, OECD countries will spend 8.4% of their entire health budget on treating the consequences of unhealthy weight on average.
Return on investment
Policies to address obesity and physical activity can provide an excellent return on investment. When comparing the implementation cost with the economic savings, policy actions are consistently found to be a good investment for countries.
OECD analyses show that for every US Dollar invested in the prevention of obesity, there will be a return of up to 6 US Dollars in the form of total economic benefits.
More importantly, all the assessed policies will prolong life, not just during a person’s later years but also by keeping people healthy during the central part of their life and allowing them to do the things that they enjoy and that society needs.
