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Title: Is Being in School Better? The Impact of School on Children's BMI When Starting Age is Endogenous
Resulting in 1 citation.
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Anderson, Patricia M. Butcher, Kristin F. Cascio, Elizabeth Ulrich Schanzenbach, Diane Whitmore |
Is Being in School Better? The Impact of School on Children's BMI When Starting Age is Endogenous Journal of Health Economics 3,5 (September 2011): 977-986. Also: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167629611000725#sec3 Cohort(s): Children of the NLSY79 Publisher: Elsevier Keyword(s): Age at School Entry; Body Mass Index (BMI); Early Childhood Longitudinal Study (ECLS-B, ECLS-K); Elementary School Students; Obesity; Schooling; Weight In this paper, we investigate the impact of attending school on body weight and obesity using a regression-discontinuity design. As is the case with academic outcomes, school exposure is related to unobserved determinants of weight outcomes because some families choose to have their child start school late (or early). If one does not account for this endogeneity, it appears that an additional year of school exposure results in a greater BMI and a higher probability of being overweight or obese. When we compare the weight outcomes of similar age children with one versus two years of school exposure due to regulations on school starting age, the significant positive effects disappear, and most point estimates become negative, but insignificant. However, additional school exposure appears to improve weight outcomes of children for whom the transition to elementary school represents a more dramatic change in environment (those who spent less time in childcare prior to kindergarten). [Note: The estimation sample in this article is drawn from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study – Kindergarten Cohort of 1998 (ECLS-K). The authors also estimated their models using the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 Mother–Child matched file] |
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Bibliography Citation
Anderson, Patricia M., Kristin F. Butcher, Elizabeth Ulrich Cascio and Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach. "Is Being in School Better? The Impact of School on Children's BMI When Starting Age is Endogenous." Journal of Health Economics 3,5 (September 2011): 977-986.
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