ArticleThe European journal of health economics : HEPAC : health economics in prevention and care2016
The costs and consequences of obesity in Germany: a new approach from a prevalence and life-cycle perspective.
Article in The European journal of health economics : HEPAC : health economics in prevention and care, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 53 papers, 3 of them syntheses that pooled it.
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Who cites it
53 citing papers in PubMed, 3 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 102 citations in OpenAlex.
- Costs of mental health care resource use in people with obesity: A systematic review.PloS one · 2025Pooled it
- Productivity loss due to overweight and obesity: a systematic review of indirect costs.BMJ open · 2017Pooled it
- Economic Burden of Obesity: A Systematic Literature Review.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2017Pooled it
- Diminished prefrontal cortex activation in patients with binge eating disorder associates with trait impulsivity and improves after impulsivity-focused treatment based on a randomized controlled IMPULS trial.NeuroImage. Clinical · 2021Trial
- Video Teaching Leads to Improved Attitudes Towards Obesity-a Randomized Study with 949 Participants.Obesity surgery · 2019Trial
- Article
- Long-Term Cost and Health Impact of a Digital Obesity Intervention in Germany: Economic Modeling Study.JMIR formative research · 2026Article
- Does Digital Make a Difference? Willingness-to-Pay for Digital Versus Offline Weight Loss in Germany.Obesity science & practice · 2026Article
- Communication-Based Teaching on Childhood Obesity and the Planetary Health Diet in Medical Education: Proof-of-Concept Study Comparing 4 Information Sources.JMIR formative research · 2026Article
- Cost-Effectiveness Analysis of Bariatric Surgery and Pharmacological Treatments for People with Obesity and Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus.Obesity surgery · 2026Article
- Estimating the hospitalisation burden of obesity in Europe: evidence from the European health interview survey (EHIS) wave 3.BMC public health · 2026Article
- Economics of hypothalamic obesity in patients with craniopharyngioma and other rare sellar/suprasellar tumors.The European journal of health economics : HEPAC : health economics in prevention and care · 2025Article
- Association between pediatric obesity and foot morphology: insights from a large-scale cross-sectional study using photogrammetry.BMC pediatrics · 2025Article
- Indirect costs constitute a major part of the total economic burden of obesity: a Finnish population-based cohort study.BMC public health · 2025Article
- Enhancing the outcomes of bariatric surgery with inhibitory control training, electrical brain stimulation and psychosocial aftercare: a pilot study protocol.Journal of eating disorders · 2024Article
- [Nutrition counseling in medical practices-a cross-sectional study].Bundesgesundheitsblatt, Gesundheitsforschung, Gesundheitsschutz · 2024Article
- Adipositas Care and Health Therapy (ACHT) after Bariatric-Metabolic Surgery: A Prospective, Non-Randomized Intervention Study.Obesity facts · 2024Article
- Therapeutic Advances in Obesity: How Real-World Evidence Impacts Affordability Beyond Standard of Care.Pragmatic and observational research · 2024Review
- Assessing the accessibility and quality of mobile health applications for the treatment of obesity in the German healthcare market.Frontiers in health services · 2024Review
- Social costs of obesity in the Czech Republic.The European journal of health economics : HEPAC : health economics in prevention and care · 2023Article
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Authors and funding
4 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
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Abstract
With the steadily growing health burden of obesity in Germany, the measuring and quantification of its costs and relevant economic consequences have become increasingly important. The usual quantifications via previous cost-of-illness approaches mostly have several weaknesses, e.g., applying "indirect methods" by using "population-attributable fractions" to identify parts of costs that can be accrued to obesity, second using highly aggregated data and third often only displaying part of the costs. This article presents a new approach and a new estimation of the cost and consequences of obesity in Germany using claims data from a German health insurance company. A sample of 146,000 individuals was analyzed with both a prevalence and a life-cycle focus on the cost and consequences of obesity. With additional data sets, we calculate the deaths per year due to obesity, the excess costs per year and several intangible consequences usually referred to as "pain and suffering". Our results show that the cost estimations of obesity in Germany so far have been largely underestimated. The annual direct costs of obesity in Germany amount to approximately €29.39 billion and the indirect costs to an additional €33.65 billion. A total of 102,000 subjects die prematurely each year because of obesity, and there is a significant excess of unemployment, long-term nursing care, and pain and suffering due to obesity. From a lifetime perspective, every obese man is equal to an additional burden of €166,911 and each woman of €206,526 for the social security system in Germany. Obesity due to unhealthy eating is thus about to replace tobacco consumption in terms of costs and consequences as the main hazardous lifestyle factor and thus should be more intensively focussed by public health policy.
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