In the last Brief, we reported on a new study from the University of Illinois finding that their wellness program had “no causal effect on the activities, health, productivity and medical spending” for its 5,000 participants. This negative study led to an expected storm of headlines in the media, summed up by the one from Bloomberg: “Workplace Wellness Programs Really Don’t Work” – letting…
By Thierry Malleret, economist Barring a catastrophic deterioration in trade and international relations around the world, tourism in general and wellness tourism in particular, will continue to thrive and expand at a much faster pace than global GDP. As a reminder, international tourism rose from 500 million trips in 1995 to 1.3 billion last year. With the explosion of the “emerging middle class”, the number is expected to…
By Thierry Malleret, economist An alarming trend: how the rates of obesity just continue to worsen in the United States. According to recent data from the CDC (Centers for Disease Control), the epidemic shows no signs of abating. Nearly four out of 10 adults are obese; for children, it’s nearly two out of 10. A recent projection from Harvard University indicates that most of today’s…
THE BUSINESS OF WELLNESS Facebook (since June) has been deleting dozens of pages focused on alternative health and natural remedies – just after founder Mark Zuckerberg claimed he would start cracking down on fake news. The Global Freedom Movement reports that the social media platform has now purged over 80 accounts (some large, some small) and that “no reason was provided. No responses to inquiries…
Wellness Evidence A large new study published in Mayo Clinic Proceedings shows that for overweight people, all weight loss is healthy, but the more pounds shed the more dramatic the impact on cutting one’s risk for metabolic syndrome – unhealthy conditions including high blood pressure, insulin resistance, excess waist fat, high triglycerides and low HDL (“good”) cholesterol. Compared to people who maintained less than a…
Why Prosperity Has Increased but Happiness Has Not – The New York Times, August 21, 2018 Observing that the impressive postwar rise in material wellbeing in the US has had zero effect on personal wellbeing, the author of The Happiness Curve: Why Life Gets Better After 50 elaborates on two key findings: (1) All happiness is local: people’s wellbeing depends mainly on their immediate…
