This project builds upon the 2009 Society of Actuaries study on the estimated economic cost of overweight and obese individuals in the entire US and Canada. We found over a $235B increase in total US cost from 2009 to 2017 with the highest total cost coming from California, New York, Florida and the lowest coming from Wyoming, Vermont and North Dakota. We bootstrapped the data to get an average State Cost of $10.94B with a 95% confidence interval of (8.04, 14.29). These findings were presented at the 2019 URF. The feedback received during this conference motivated us to expand the analysis to compute per capita cost by state. We found the highest per capita cost coming from West Virginia at $785, and the lowest coming from Colorado at $634.75. After bootstrapping the data we found a total per capita cost of $720.15, with a 95% confidence interval of ($711.34, $728.76). We included another map that showed the percentages of overweight and obese individuals in the US and found that West Virginia had the highest percentage of overweight and obese individuals at 74%, while Colorado had the lowest at 60%. This research has taught me how to work with superiors on making deadlines and successfully completing a project, which will directly impact me in my future career.
Author: Nikola Andjelic
Faculty Advisor: Dr. Tatjana Miljkovic, Department of Statistics
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