Working Paper: CEPR ID: DP10556
Authors: Charlotte Cabane; Adrian Hille; Michael Lechner
Abstract: Using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel, this paper analyses the effects of spending part of adolescents? leisure time on playing music or doing sports, or both. We find that while playing music fosters educational outcomes compared to doing sports, particularly so for girls and children from more highly educated families, doing sports improves subjective health. For educational outcomes, doing both activities appeared to be most successful. The results are subjected to an extensive robustness analysis including instru-mental variable estimation and a formal sensitivity analysis of the identifying assumptions, which does not reveal any serious problems.
Keywords: Child Development; Leisure Time Activities; Matching Estimation; SOEP
JEL Codes: C21; I12; I18; J24; L83; Z28; Z29
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| music participation (L82) | educational outcomes (I26) |
| sports participation (Z22) | subjective health (I12) |
| music participation (L82) | school grades (A21) |
| music participation (L82) | upper secondary school attendance (I21) |
| music participation (L82) | university enrollment (I23) |
| music and sports participation (Z29) | educational success (I24) |
| music and sports participation (Z29) | health (I19) |