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Studying the Child Obesity Epidemic With Natural Experiments

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Author Info
Robert Sandy
Gilbert Liu
John Ottensmann
Rusty Tchernis
Jeffrey Wilson
O.T. Ford

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Abstract

We utilize clinical records of successive visits by children to pediatric clinics in Indianapolis to estimate the effects on their body mass of environmental changes near their homes. We compare results for fixed-residence children with those for cross-sectional data. Our environmental factors are fast food restaurants, supermarkets, parks, trails, and violent crimes, and 13 types of recreational amenities derived from the interpretation of annual aerial photographs. We looked for responses to these factors changing within buffers of 0.1, 0.25, 0.5, and 1 mile. We found that cross-sectional estimates are quite different from the Fixed Effects estimates of the impacts of amenities locating near a child. In cross section nearby fast food restaurants were associated with higher BMI and supermarkets with lower BMI. These results were reversed in the FE estimates. The recreational amenities that appear to lower children's BMI were fitness areas, kickball diamonds, and volleyball courts. We estimated that locating these amenities near their homes could reduce the weight of an overweight eight-year old boy by 3 to 6 pounds.

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Paper provided by National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc in its series NBER Working Papers with number 14989.

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Date of creation: May 2009
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Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:14989

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I1 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health

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  1. Michael Anderson & David Matsa, 2007. "Are Restaurants Really Supersizing America?," Department of Agricultural & Resource Economics, UC Berkeley, Working Paper Series 1056, Department of Agricultural & Resource Economics, UC Berkeley. [Downloadable!]
  2. John Cawley & Chad D. Meyerhoefer & David Newhouse, 2005. "The Impact of State Physical Education Requirements on Youth Physical Activity and Overweight," NBER Working Papers 11411, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  3. Daniel Millimet & Rusty Tchernis & Muna Hussain, 2007. "School Nutrition Programs and the Incidence of Childhood Obesity," Caepr Working Papers 2007-014, Center for Applied Economics and Policy Research, Economics Department, Indiana University Bloomington. [Downloadable!]
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  4. Mary Burke & Frank Heiland, 2006. "Social dynamics of obesity," Public Policy Discussion Paper 06-5, Federal Reserve Bank of Boston. [Downloadable!]
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  5. Hogan J.W. & Tchernis R., 2004. "Bayesian Factor Analysis for Spatially Correlated Data, With Application to Summarizing Area-Level Material Deprivation From Census Data," Journal of the American Statistical Association, American Statistical Association, vol. 99, pages 314-324, January. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  6. Neeraj Kaushal, 2007. "Do Food Stamps Cause Obesity? Evidence from Immigrant Experience," NBER Working Papers 12849, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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