The economic cost of obesity: the French situation

OBJECTIVE: To estimate the economic burden of obesity in France. DESIGN: A prevalence-based approach identifying the costs incurred during a given year (1992) by obese subjects. MEASUREMENTS: Direct costs (personal health care, hospital care, physician services, drugs) and indirect costs (lost output as a result of cessation or reduction of productivity caused by morbidity and mortality); economic benefits due to the reduced incidence of hip fractures. RESULTS: The direct costs of obesity (BMI > or = 27) were 11.89 billion French Francs (FF), which corresponded to about 2% of the expenses of the French care system. Hypertension represented 33% of the total amount and cancer 2.5% of the direct cost of obesity. Indirect costs represented FF 0.6 billion. These are conservative estimates as far as all obesity-related diseases and all health care and indirect costs were not included due to missing information. CONCLUSION: These results were remarkably similar to previous reports on the economic costs of obesity in other western countries (USA, Sweden, Netherlands, Australia) which concluded that the cost of obesity amounted to around 2% to 5% of the total cost of health care in industrialized societies.