All of Scioteca
Communities & Collections By Issue Date Authors Titles Subjects Country / Region
Profiles
Our Authors
My Account
Login

Spillovers of health education at school on parents´ physical activity

To prevent modern health conditions like obesity, cancer, cardiovascular illness, and diabetes, which have reached epidemic-like proportions in recent decades, many health experts argue that students should receive Health Education (HED) at school. Although this type of education aims mainly to improve children's health profiles, it might affect other family members as well. This paper exploits state HED reforms as quasi-natural experiments to estimate the causal impact of HED received by children on their parents' physical activity. We use data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) for the period 1999-2005 merged with data on state HED reforms from the National Association of State Boards of Education (NASBE) Health Policy Database, and the 2000 and 2006 School Health Policies and Programs Study (SHPPS). To identify the spillover effects of HED requirements on parents' behavior we use a “differences-in-differences-in-differences" (DDD) methodology in which we allow for different types of treatments. We find a positive effect of HED reforms at the elementary school on the probability of parents doing light physical activity. Introducing major changes in HED increases the probability of fathers engaging in physical activity by 12.4 percentage points, while this probability for mothers does not seem to be affected. We find evidence of two channels that may drive these spillovers. We conclude that the gender specialization of parents in childcare activities, as well as information sharing between children and parents, may play a role in generating these indirect effects and in turn, in shaping healthy lifestyles within the household.

Abstract

Description

Subject

Educación | Alimentación | Investigación socioeconómica | Salud

País / Región

URI

https://scioteca.caf.com/handle/123456789/232

Date

2012

Cite from this publication

Collections

6.1 Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica

Endorsement

Review

Supplemented By

Referenced By

Creative Commons license

CC-BY-NC
Except where otherwised noted, this item's license is described as CC-BY-NC
Thumbnail Image

Files

Berniell,Lucila.pdf (636.6 KB)

Authors

Journal Title

Journal ISSN

Volume Title

Publisher

CAF

Related Items

Thumbnail Image
Early Impacts of College Aid

We analyze the impact of an expansion in government-guaranteed credit for higher education in Chile on a sample of elementary and high school students. Using...

Thumbnail Image
RED 2016. More Skills for Work and Life: The contributions of Families, Schools, Jobs, and the Social Environment

Skills are the mainstay of human capital. They are the capabilities that a person has to effectively solve different problems. Skills include not only knowledge...

Thumbnail Image
Poor Little Children: The Socioeconomic Gap in Parental Responses to School Disadvantage

In this paper, we study how parents react to a widely-used school policy that puts some children at a learning disadvantage. Specifically, we first document...

Thumbnail Image
The Effect of the Kangaroo Mother Care Program (KMC) on Wages: A structural Model

In this paper we analyze the relationship between skills and some outcomes later in life for a population of premature children. Pretreatment skills and characteristics...

Thumbnail Image
Peer Effects in the Development of Capabilities in Adolescence

We estimate peer effects in cognitive, non-cognitive and health-related outcomes in a sample of Uruguayan high-school students. Our identification strategy is based on two features...

Thumbnail Image
Full-Time Schools and Gender Specialization: Time Use Adjustments in Mexican Households

This article analyzes how extending the school day by 3.5 hours in Mexican elementary schools affected time use patterns of mothers and fathers. Using a...