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Smoking, War or Obesity: Which Takes the Biggest Economic Toll on the World?

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When it comes to social burdens created by humans, smoking, war and obesity rank right at the top of the list. And according to a new report from McKinsey, the three are actually about equally destructive, at least from an economic perspective.

McKinsey estimates that smoking and armed conflict (including war, violence and terrorism) each had an annual global economic impact of $2.1 trillion, or about 2.9 percent of GDP. The impact of obesity was only slightly lower at $2.0 trillion, equivalent to 2.8 percent of global GDP.

What does this number mean? The report estimates total economic impact based on something called disability-adjusted life years, a metric used by the World Health Organization to study disease. It includes both years lost due to early fatalities from disease and years that are rendered less productive due to disease and disability. From there, the authors use purchasing power parity-adjusted GDP to estimate the economic impact.

The other items on the list are alcoholism, with a $1.4 trillion annual global economic impact, followed by illiteracy, climate change, air pollution, drug use and road accidents.

The scary thing about obesity in comparison to these other threats is that it is so clearly on the rise.

More than 2.1 billion people, or nearly 30 percent of the global population, are overweight or obese. But if trends continue at their current rate, by 2030, that proportion could rise to nearly half of the world’s population.

According to the report, obesity is now responsible for about 5 percent of all deaths worldwide. Left unchecked, obesity could soon prove to be a bigger economic burden on the world than the long-recognized evils of tobacco and war.