overweight or obese was defined by a dummy variable equal to 1 for levels above 30. BMI Similar results were obtained when changing the to categorise smoking and ‘cut-off’ thresholds heavy drinking behaviours. In their interpretation, the authors suggest that is in “some caution as their and observe that are sensitive to how the behaviour is order” “results defined”, of how risk behaviours are defined may be worthwhile in “additional exploration future studies” (p.1270). Contributing along this line, here we use a richer set of health indicators in the attempt to obtain estimates less sensitive to changes in the categorization of risky habits. The beyond HEI: BMI? The construction of the measure is discussed in detail in the Online Appendix C. In a HEI nutshell, the has been proposed in 1995 by nutrition experts within the US Department of HEI Agriculture (USDA) (Kennedy et al., 1995; Guenther et al. 2006a, 2006b, 2007; USDA, 2011), and its special attractiveness lies in the fact that it is a global measure of individual quality of diet and nutritional balance, adjusted by the total caloric intake of the subject. This feature makes the particularly fit to complement the Body Mass Index (BMI). HEI The has been recently used as an alternative to in order to disentangle the complex HEI BMI effects of different aspects of healthy weight on socio-economic outcomes: for instance, Bhattacharya et al., (2004) employ the to assess the quality of the diet when exploring the HEI link between food insecurity and poverty, while Bhattacharya et al., (2006) use it in an evaluation of the school breakfast program on the nutrition of children and their families. An
overweight or obese was defined by a dummy variable equal to 1 for BMI levels above 30. Similar results were obtained when changing the ‘cut-off’ thresholds to categorise smoking and heavy drinking behaviours. In their interpretation, the authors suggest that “some caution is in order” as their “results are sensitive to how the behaviour is defined”, and observe that “additional exploration of how risk behaviours are defined may be worthwhile in future studies” (p.1270). Contributing along this line, here we use a richer set of health indicators in the attempt to obtain estimates less sensitive to changes in the categorization of risky habits. The HEI: beyond BMI? The construction of the HEI measure is discussed in detail in the Online Appendix C. In a nutshell, the HEI has been proposed in 1995 by nutrition experts within the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) (Kennedy et al., 1995; Guenther et al. 2006a, 2006b, 2007; USDA, 2011), and its special attractiveness lies in the fact that it is a global measure of individual quality of diet and nutritional balance, adjusted by the total caloric intake of the subject. This feature makes the HEI particularly fit to complement the Body Mass Index (BMI). The HEI has been recently used as an alternative to BMI in order to disentangle the complex effects of different aspects of healthy weight on socio-economic outcomes: for instance, Bhattacharya et al., (2004) employ the HEI to assess the quality of the diet when exploring the link between food insecurity and poverty, while Bhattacharya et al., (2006) use it in an evaluation of the school breakfast program on the nutrition of children and their families. An