The Effect of Maternal Employment on the Likelihood of a Child Being Overweight

Anna Zhu ()
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Anna Zhu: School of Economics, The University of New South Wales

No 2007-17, Discussion Papers from School of Economics, The University of New South Wales

Abstract: Childhood obesity has increased dramatically in the developed world. One cause of this trend, suggested by studies in the United States, is the increase in maternal employment. This paper explores if the causal relationship exists in Australia. Using recent data from the Longitudinal Survey of Australian Children (LSAC), a 2SLS procedure and a Full Information Maximum Likelihood (FIML) model that jointly estimates a multinomial treatment and binary outcome is used to control for endogeneity and self-selection bias, respectively. The results consistently show that maternal employment does have an impact on the likelihood of a child being overweight and that this impact is positive and statistically significant.

Keywords: Child obesity; Maternal employment; Regression analysis; 2SLS; FIML; Endogeneity; Self-selection bias (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C30 C31 C35 I10 J22 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 35 pages
Date: 2007-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hea and nep-lab
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:swe:wpaper:2007-17

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