Body Weight and Academic Performance: Gender and Peer Effects

Adriana Barone and Annamaria Nese ()
Additional contact information
Annamaria Nese: CELPE - Centre of Labour Economics and Economic Policy, University of Salerno - Italy, http://www.unisa.it/docenti/annamarianese/index

No 129, CELPE Discussion Papers from CELPE - CEnter for Labor and Political Economics, University of Salerno, Italy

Abstract: Taking into account the economic consequences of obesity highlighted in literature (Cawley, 2004), this study investigates the association between overweight and skill attainment at the university of Salerno in Italy, with particular focus on gender differences. Our findings indicate a significant negative relationship between body mass index and academic achievement only for female students thus suggesting that, during late adolescence, physicality plays different roles according to gender. We also investigated gender differences in relation to psychological factors and we find that i)only females consider "being attractive" as an important factor for their well-being and ii) peers' behavior matters on individual eating habits only when female students are considered

Keywords: Human Capital; Body weight; Educational Economics; Microeconometrics (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C25 D01 I12 I21 J24 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 33 pages
Date: 2014-12-30
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dem, nep-edu, nep-hea and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.celpe.unisa.it/uploads/rescue/784/1048/dp_129.pdf Full text (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:sal:celpdp:0129

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CELPE Discussion Papers from CELPE - CEnter for Labor and Political Economics, University of Salerno, Italy via Giovanni Paolo II, 132, 84084 - Fisciano (SA), ITALY. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Roberto Dell'Anno ().