Working Paper: NBER ID: w23376
Authors: Charles Courtemanche; Rusty Tchernis; Xilin Zhou
Abstract: This study exploits plausibly exogenous variation from the youngest sibling’s school eligibility to estimate the effects of parental work on the weight outcomes of older children in the household. Data come from the 1979 cohort of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth linked to the Child and Young Adult Supplement. We first show that mothers’ work hours increase gradually as the age of the youngest child rises, whereas mothers’ spouses’ work hours exhibit a discontinuous jump at kindergarten eligibility. Leveraging these insights, we develop an instrumental variables model that shows that parents’ work hours lead to larger increases in children’s BMI z-scores and probabilities of being overweight and obese than those identified in previous studies. We find no evidence that the impacts of maternal and paternal work are different. Subsample analyses find that the effects are concentrated among advantaged households, as measured by an index involving education, race, and mother’s marital status.
Keywords: childhood obesity; parental work hours; instrumental variables; sibling school eligibility
JEL Codes: I12; J22
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| parental work hours (J22) | children's BMI z-scores (Y10) |
| parental work hours (J22) | probabilities of being overweight (C46) |
| parental work hours (J22) | probabilities of being obese (C46) |
| youngest sibling's relative age (J13) | maternal work (J22) |
| interaction of youngest sibling's kindergarten eligibility and mother's marital status (J12) | maternal work (J22) |
| maternal work (J22) | childhood obesity (J13) |