IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/cpr/ceprdp/18213.html

Swallow This: Childhood and Adolescent Exposure to Fast Food Restaurants, BMI, and Cognitive Ability

Author

Listed:
  • Abrahamsson, Sara
  • Bütikofer, Aline
  • Karbownik, Krzysztof

Abstract

Using spatial and temporal variation in openings of fast food restaurants in Norway between 1980 and 2007, we study the effects of changes in the supply of high caloric nutrition on the health and cognitive ability of young adult males. Our results indicate that exposure to these establishments during childhood and adolescence increases BMI and has negative effects on cognition. Heterogeneity analysis does not reveal meaningful differences in the effects across groups, including for those with adverse prenatal health or high paternal BMI, an exception being that cognition is only affected by exposure at ages 0--12 and this effect is mediated by paternal education.

Suggested Citation

  • Abrahamsson, Sara & Bütikofer, Aline & Karbownik, Krzysztof, 2023. "Swallow This: Childhood and Adolescent Exposure to Fast Food Restaurants, BMI, and Cognitive Ability," CEPR Discussion Papers 18213, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
  • Handle: RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:18213
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://cepr.org/publications/DP18213
    Download Restriction: CEPR Discussion Papers are free to download for our researchers, subscribers and members. If you fall into one of these categories but have trouble downloading our papers, please contact us at subscribers@cepr.org
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version below or

    for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. is not listed on IDEAS
    2. Bencsik, Panka & Lusher, Lester & Taylor, Rebecca L.C., 2025. "Slow traffic, fast food: The effects of time lost on food store choice," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 146(C).

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • I12 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Health Behavior
    • I20 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - General
    • J13 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Fertility; Family Planning; Child Care; Children; Youth
    • L66 - Industrial Organization - - Industry Studies: Manufacturing - - - Food; Beverages; Cosmetics; Tobacco

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:18213. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cepr.org .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.