In the context of a cultural economy that values thinness over fatness along moral and aesthetic dimensions, the body can serve as a repository for individual differentiation and status distinctions. Moreover, bodily form can affect life chances, operating, like cultural capital, as an informal basis for contemporary social closure practices, which function to delimit individual attainments.

As the baby-boom population ages, adults are asked to take greater responsibility and control of their financial situation, but often are not equipped to assume that responsibility. This lack of control of one’s finances exposes individuals to financial risk in retirement, potentially resulting in insufficient income to maintain an existing standard of living and increasing the current level of poverty among older adults.