£1 for a lb

Thursday, July 02, 2009

Would getting paid to lose weight give you the incentive to drop your excess pounds? For the first time ever in the UK obese people are being paid to lose weight in a pilot government scheme. The aptly named pound-for-pound scheme run by NHS South West Essex will give overweight volunteers a £1 shopping voucher for every 1lb they lose in weight.

This is an interesting idea, the government trying to adjust the information people have on diet and lifestyle and how this affects not only them but everyone around them through an incentives scheme. This article explains in more detail the scheme.

This could lead nicely into a discussion of market failure and how the government try to correct what they perceive to be going wrong in the market. What do you think the government should do to prevent people from becoming overweight? Should this really concern the government greatly?

Source: www.statistics.gov.uk