Today, nearly two-thirds of adults are living with obesity and excess weight. As well as reducing quality of life and putting pressure on our health service, this  places a severe burden on our economy. At a time when the government is prioritising economic growth, we wanted to better understand the impact of obesity and excess weight on UK productivity – in other words, how efficient our economy is. 

We commissioned Frontier Economics to model the economic and productivity cost of obesity and excess weight to the UK economy, and potential economic gains from taking policy action to reduce the prevalence of obesity and excess weight. This work builds on previous analyses of the economic impact of obesity and excess weight by taking into account other drivers of productivity loss which include lower in-work productivity and lost working years due to dying earlier.

The aim of this work was to continue to highlight the economic importance of tackling obesity and the need to prioritise investment in effective obesity-related policies.

Through this project, we have gained a more comprehensive and accurate understanding of the impact of obesity and excess weight on the UK economy and productivity, and to demonstrate the positive impact of effective policy action to reduce obesity rates.

Nesta’s healthy life mission is to increase the number of healthy years lived in the UK by halving the prevalence of obesity by 2030. We know that a range of levers are needed to achieve this, including policy change. We want to build the evidence base for taking policy action on obesity, and think that this piece of work provides policymakers with robust evidence on the economic benefits of doing so.