Working Paper: NBER ID: w15007
Authors: Chris M. Herbst; Erdal Tekin
Abstract: Child care subsidies play a critical role in facilitating the transition of disadvantaged mothers from welfare to work. However, little is known about the influence of these policies on children's health and well-being. In this paper, we study the impact of subsidy receipt on low-income children's weight outcomes in the fall and spring of kindergarten. The goals of our empirical analysis are twofold. We first utilize standard OLS and fixed effects methods to explore body mass index as well as measures of overweight and obesity. We then turn to quantile regression to address the possibility that subsidy receipt has heterogeneous effects on children's weight at different points in the BMI distribution. Results suggest that subsidy receipt is associated with increases in BMI and a greater likelihood of being overweight and obese. We also find substantial variation in subsidy effects across the BMI distribution. In particular, child care subsidies have no effect on BMI at the lower end of the distribution, inconsistent effects in the middle of the distribution, and large effects at the top of the distribution. Our results point to the use of non-parental child care, particularly centerbased services, as the key mechanism through which subsidies influence children's weight outcomes.
Keywords: child care subsidies; childhood obesity; BMI; low-income children
JEL Codes: I12; I18; J13
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| Child care subsidy receipt (J13) | Increase in Body Mass Index (BMI) (I14) |
| Child care subsidy receipt (J13) | Higher likelihood of being overweight (I14) |
| Child care subsidy receipt (J13) | Higher likelihood of obesity (I12) |
| Child care subsidy receipt (J13) | Attenuation of effects by spring of kindergarten (I21) |
| Child care subsidy receipt (J13) | Statistically insignificant relationship when controlling for child care arrangements (J12) |