Tags: Airlines, obesity, politics
Obesity is a socially sensitive subject in America. However, in attempting to be accepting of all of humankind’s shapes and sizes, certain practical issues tend to intrude. One example hits especially close to home…or, shall I say, on the way home. On my recent Delta Airlines flight, when I arrived at my seat the large woman on the aisle of my row exclaimed to my brother and me, “Ooo yay, little people!” For the duration of the three-hour flight, I sat on half of my seat and leaned heavily towards my brother’s. The flight was fully booked, and I had no desire to offend this obese woman or cause a scene. However, upon reflection, I realized that I paid for my full seat and was only allotted half of it.
Drawing the line between one person’s individual freedom and the individual freedom of another presents a precarious dilemma. Should extremely obese people be forced to buy two seats? It’s still an open question in America, but according to a January 2008 Canadian Supreme Court decision they should not. The court ruled that airlines could not charge extra for a second seat for someone whose obesity constitutes a disability. The ethical issues surrounding obesity are complex, largely because the causes of obesity are complicated. Some people argue that,in addition to simple overeating, genetic makeup, metabolic disorders, or psychosocial problems can also cause obesity. On the other hand, if a person pays full price for his or her seat, isn’t that person entitled to all they pay for? The issue is that both the obese and the non-obese each have a legal contract with the airline carrier in purchasing the one seat. Therefore, they both have rights that must be respected.
There is no clear solution to this predicament. Clearly, if an obese person can afford two seats, it is beneficial to society—or at least his or her neighbors on the plane—if he or she purchases them. However, an obese person is under no legal obligation to do so. When the personal freedom of one person causes discomfort for another, the extent to which the law can interfere often becomes blurred. In the end, whether one person pays for another seat or another person loses half a seat, someone must make a sacrifice.
(Image by kevindooley used under a Creative Commons license.)
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4 Comments
To be sure, Aaron, there is nothing simple about social welfare economics, and for each action, there are reactions and interactions that are rightly taken into consideration as you suggest. For example, people who place a particularly high value on comfort can themselves book first class, or try to avoid full flights by shifting their travel times to off-peak hours. Or, airplane designers can increase the size of seats. But, in a social welfare context, it would not be efficient to design planes to fit the largest among us, only the average size passenger. Conversely, I would agree the airline would deserve some responsibility for the negative externality if it is sizing the seat to fit a person of below average size. In reality, of course, there are many active contributors to the production of negative externalities, and this case is no exception. That said, I don’t think it is a gross oversimplification in this case to conclude that a social welfare economic analysis would find the obese passenger responsible for at least some portion of the negative externality being generated. The whole point of the social welfare economic paradigm is to create a market mechanism that gets us away from having either “victims” or ‘culprits.” These labels exist only to the extent costs are not being properly identified, internalized and assigned in the marketplace.
I certainly agree with all that; there are a lot of competing considerations here, and I think you’re right that moralistic terms like ‘victim’ and ‘culprit’ may not be entirely appropriate or cleanly applicable, especially in an economic context.
I agree with the writer that this issue is a complex one for all the reasons this writer so insightfully presents. That said, as an economist, I can perhaps simplify the framing of the issue (but not necessarily the solution) by viewing this issue as a case of negative externalities. In which case, this would suggest the passenger generating the negative externality or spillover cost (no pun intended) be levied some additional fee which should be used to compensate the passenger who is losing benefit of half of seat. The idea would be to create a market in which passengers for whom the monetary compensation equalled or exceeded the value to which they placed on the loss of comfort could bid for this category of seat. Moreover, such a model has more widespread applications. Not to unnecessarily single out obese passengers, this same model could be used to allow passengers to bid for seats next to families travelling with small children, another class of passengers generating negative externaties for their fellow passengers.
I think it’s perceptive of you to highlight discomfort generally as a negative externality, not just how much space a given passenger occupies. When we think about it this way, people sitting next to obese passengers aren’t the only ones who are uncomfortable – the obese passengers themselves must be fairly uncomfortable! In this case, they are the ones suffering due to the fact that planes have seats that (outside first class, anyway) tend to be fairly small.
I’m not trying to suggest that plane seats should be built specifically to accommodate obese pasengers or that we should subsidize obese passengers flying first class – this would probably be discriminatory, too – but just pointing out that it’s easy to identify these passengers as the “culprits” in the generation of discomfort on the plane, whereas in reality there are a number of factors bearing on this situation, and obese passengers can be seen as “victims” (of airplane design) just as much as they’re seen as culprits.