Women Are More Likely to Get a Job and Find a Partner While on GLP1s, New Study Suggests

Women Are More Likely to Get a Job and Find a Partner While on GLP1s, New Study Suggests https://ift.tt/osEktN8

The study compared outcomes for women who started GLP-1s for weight loss with those who would like to start the medication, but have not

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NEED TO KNOW

• A new study conducted at Harvard University indicates that GLP-1 medications can have an impact on women’s job and relationship outcomes
• Women starting GLP-1s saw significant increases in employment rates and new relationships over time, the research showed
• Existing jobs and relationships remained unchanged, suggesting the drugs influence first impressions rather than ongoing dynamics

GLP-1 drugs help with weight loss, but are they able to help women with their employment and relationship status too?

That is the question Rebecca Diamond, professor of economics at Harvard University, put to the test in a paper recently published by the National Bureau of Economic Research.

Diamond told The FAS Current that she became interested in researching this topic when a friend told her that she felt a “stark difference” in how people treated her before and after losing weight on a GLP-1.

“It was almost a passing comment, but it gave me the curiosity of, ‘Huh, is there any research on the economic and social implications of these drugs?’ ” said Diamond. “I did a quick lit review, and I couldn’t really find anything. Then I dug into it.”  

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To conduct her research, Diamond examined data from the Understanding America Study, a nationally representative, probability-based Internet panel of approximately 15,000 U.S. residents housed at the University of Southern California.

Diamond compared women who started GLP-1s for weight loss with women who would like to start a GLP-1 but have not.

Through her analysis, Diamond found that the probability of women who were single when they started using a GLP-1 to later become married or begin living with a partner rose by 18 percentage points overall and by 29 percentage points after six or more quarters.

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Diamond noted that “the gain builds gradually as weight comes off.”

Women who were not employed at the start of their GLP-1 journey also managed to find work afterward, the research showed.

“Their employment rate rises 13 percentage points overall and 27 percentage points after six or more quarters, and their weekly hours rise by nearly ten hours at the longer horizon,” wrote Diamond. “Much of the employment gain is movement out of unemployment rather than out of retirement or disability.”

Diamond said that the data for women who were already in a relationship or employed when they started taking GLP-1s remained “essentially unchanged.”

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“You might expect if you’re just more motivated and more excited about taking on new things, you might have seen some increase in those metrics. But we don’t see that,” Diamond told The FAS Current. “That’s why I think it’s more about the first impression margin.”  

Diamond believes that things didn’t change for people who were already employed or in a relationship when they started a GLP-1, because their first impression already happened.

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“For people who have been in a job a long time, the employer knows whether you’re good at the job; they don’t care about your weight at that point anymore,” Diamond told The FAS Current. “On the partnership margin, your partner cares about more than just your weight; that’s why you are with them. That might respond less than a first impression margin.”