I'm not fat, just too short for my weight - Family Child Care and Obesity in Germany

Philippe Mahler ()
Additional contact information
Philippe Mahler: Socioeconomic Institute, University of Zurich

No 707, SOI - Working Papers from Socioeconomic Institute - University of Zurich

Abstract: Obesity is increasing worldwide for both adults and children. Genetic disposition is responsible for some variation in body weight but cannot explain the dramatic increase in the last two decades. The increase must be due to structural and behavioral changes. One such behavioral change is the increase in working females in the last decades. The absence from the mother reduces potential child care time in the family. Reduced child care time may have adverse effects on the prevalence of obesity in children and adults. This paper analyzes the effect of mother�s labor supply in childhood on young adults probability of being obese in Germany. Using a sample drawn from the German Socio-Economic Panel the results show that a higher labor supply of the mother increases the probability for her child to be obese as young adult. This result underlines the importance of childhood environment on children�s later life outcome and the importance of behavioral changes in explaining the increase in obesity.

Keywords: GSOEP; obesity; female labor supply; child care; sibling estimation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D10 I12 J22 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 27 pages
Date: 2007-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eec, nep-hap, nep-hea and nep-lab
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.zora.uzh.ch/id/eprint/52377/1/wp0707.pdf First version, 2007 (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:soz:wpaper:0707

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in SOI - Working Papers from Socioeconomic Institute - University of Zurich Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Severin Oswald ().