August 23, 2007

"Maybe I should set aside $10 every week, which I get back at the end of the week if I don’t eat anything bad for me."

A Freakonomics diet idea. I like that idea, even at the low $10 level. It's not really enough to be paid for the amount of trouble, and since you're paying yourself, it's nothing. But little things like that can jostle you into behaving differently.

There's a big obesity forum at the link, with several authors. The $10 idea is from Havard econprof David Cutler.

4 comments:

Tim said...

Oddly enough, in health care, folks DO respond to small financial incentives; but to their own personal health needs, as the growing epidemic of obesity and adult onset diabetes demonstrates (as well as substance abuse does to), not so much.

I blame the third-party health care system. "Single-payer" or other variants of socialized medicine would make it worse. Healthier people, like better drivers, should pay less for their health care insurance for the all to obvious reason their risk is less. That is, if you think insurance is about risk. Which, of course, it is.

hdhouse said...

don't you mean $10 a day and back at the end of each week? Otherwise, as is the bent with all economists (well a lot of them anyway), the behavior:reward is so short that people will loose interest...i.e. well i'm gonna get the $10 back tonight anyway so it will be used for a post reward bag of twinkies now.

Maxine Weiss said...

Question for "johnaltco" :

Why can't you tickle yourself?

J. Cricket said...

Why are you obsessed with fat?