By Xavier Kong
While there are plenty of jokes on the Internet about obese people in America, obesity is a problem that affects the world. In this first of this three-part series, KiniBiz looks at this crisis, and how it affects Malaysia in an economic sense.
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With the end of 2014 and the advent of 2015, the time has come once again where New Year resolutions are made (whether or not these resolutions succeed is a different matter altogether). Of course, one of the most common resolutions is usually “I will lose weight this year!”, and, as mentioned, success in the matter is a whole different thing altogether.
The problem of obesity has reached a worrying level in Malaysia, to the point that the economy is very much in danger of being impacted by this particular health issue. According to a report by the McKinsey Global Institute, obesity has risen to be one of the top three global social burdens generated by human beings. This places obesity on the same scale of impact as smoking and armed violence, war and terrorism.
Obesity alone has made an impact of roughly US$2 trillion (RM7 trillion), an equivalent of about 2.8% of the world’s gross domestic product. For a sense of scale, smoking makes an impact of about US$2.1 trillion, 2.9% of the world’s GDP, while armed violence, war, and terrorism (with military budgets counted in) clocks in at about US$2.1 trillion as well, for a 2.8% impact, the same as obesity.
Having now shown that obesity as a social illness of the same degree of impact as armed conflict, how does obesity impact the economy? According to McKinsey’s report, obesity imposes significant costs on healthcare systems.
“Around the world, 2% to 7% of all healthcare spending relates to measures to prevent and treat this condition, with up to 20% of all healthcare spending attributable to obesity, through related diseases such as type 2 diabetes and heart disease,” noted the report, adding that these healthcare costs were a burden on finances.
“Furthermore, overall economic productivity and employers are both affected by impaired productivity,” added the report. Noted was that the prevalence of obesity is still rising in developed economies, with emerging markets experiencing the same rising prevalence as they become richer.
The McKinsey Global Institute’s research has turned up evidence that suggests that the economic and societal impact of obesity is deep and lasting.
“It may entrench social inequalities between generations; obesity in parents appears to increase the risk of obesity in their children through both physiological and behavioural mechanisms. An additional implication is that, even if the current rise in prevalence can be reversed, the damaging health implications and economic costs the world is experiencing today could persist well into the future,” stated the report.
The report also cited Kelly et al’s report on global obesity, which stated that, if the prevalence of obesity continued its current trajectory, almost half the world’s adult population could be overweight or obese by 2030.
But how does this impact Malaysia?
And how does it not? Malaysia already holds the dubious award for the highest rate of obesity in the continent of Asia, according to British medical journal The Lancet. Of note is that the Malaysian Association for the Study of Obesity (MASO) had already published a paper in 2005 that would show the trend of obesity in Malaysia reaching where it is now. The paper also agreed that the economic costs of obesity are important issues, not just for healthcare providers, but also for policy makers.
The paper also noted how obesity would affect the country socio-economically, calling to attention the point that obesity is associated with an increased prevalence of socio-economic hardship due to a higher rate of disability, early retirement, and widespread discrimination.
“As a result of industrialisation, urbanisation, and economic stability in Malaysia, significant changes in diet and lifestyle have occurred. This has had a dramatic impact on the health of the population as evidenced from the increased prevalence of obesity and chronic non-communicable diseases,” said the MASO paper, listing type 2 diabetes, heart issues, hypertension, and osteoarthritis among the diseases that are more likely to occur with obesity.
This was also supported by the McKinsey paper, which noted that many of the countries experiencing a rise in prevalence of obesity are also those with more income.
KiniBiz cannot help but notice that a majority of the diseases mentioned tended towards debilitating diseases that would interfere with a person’s lifestyle, which, unless KiniBiz is very much mistaken, would most likely affect a person’s ability to work, both in the short term and the long term.
Take, as an example, hypertension. On its own, it causes feelings of light-headedness, which would impair a work day already. However, hypertension also brings with it the increased likelihood of strokes, and these, in turn, could be fatal.
With the increased risks of such diseases due to obesity, a company could very well lose the inherent experience and expertise of a member of its staff, either temporarily, or permanently in the worst case scenario. Not to sound callous, but to train up a greenhorn to take up the mantle of the lost staff member would require a significant length of time and resources, not to mention the loss of experience of the staff member, whether in handling a crisis, in his or her network of contacts, or even the knowledge of the tiny details of the company that might either make or break them.
Coming back to Malaysia holding the award for the highest rate of obesity in Asia with 45.3% of the nation’s population categorised as obese, and computing it with the above, it would not be that much of a leap of logic to infer that the possibility of a loss of productivity in any company in Malaysia is that much higher compared to other countries.
It boils down to simple mathematics. With a higher rate of obesity, there is a higher chance that someone working for a company is obese, which, when coupled with the higher chances of illness among the obese, would lead to a higher possibility of a loss of productivity for the company.
If this were to happen to every company in a single sector of the market, that sector would in turn face a dip in numbers. Theoretically, it seems likely that the nation could very well grind to a halt if the variable of the rate of obesity is maintained. It is a scary thought to imagine that a country could be brought low by its own people that way.
In the next part of the series, KiniBiz explores the ways and means of tackling the issue, and how Malaysia has done thus far in handling obesity.
Tomorrow: Tackling obesity
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