Maternal Employment and Childhood Obesity in Spain

Emma García, Jose Labeaga and Carolina Ortega

No 2006-17, Working Papers from FEDEA

Abstract: In this paper we explore to which extent the increase in childhood overweight and obesity are consequences of the participation of mothers in the labour market. We think that the increase in female labor force participation can explain, at least in part, the observed increase in the prevalence of overweight and obesity among children. Since it is very difficult to establish causal effects between both variables, we intend to measure it indirectly by using discrete choice models. Our results confirm that maternal employment could be at the root of this personal and social problem, which in absence of specific measures from several fields could become epidemic in the next decades. Otherwise, individuals' quality of life could be threatened, and expenditure devoted to control or alleviate this health problem could put pressure on the sustainability of the National Health System in the future.

Date: 2006-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dcm and nep-hea
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (24)

Downloads: (external link)
https://documentos.fedea.net/pubs/dt/2006/dt-2006-17.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:fda:fdaddt:2006-17

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from FEDEA
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Carmen Arias ().