Do School Junk Food Bans Improve Student Health? Evidence from Canada

Philip Leonard

Canadian Public Policy, 2017, vol. 43, issue 2, 105-119

Abstract: Six Canadian provinces have banned the sale of junk food on school property to address child health issues such as obesity. Differences in the timing of the introduction of provincial policies provide variation in treatment across provinces, and variation within provinces comes from differences across students in the number of years of schooling during which junk food was banned. Using data from cycles of the Canadian Community Health Survey, I find that each year of a junk food ban is associated with a decline of about 0.05 body mass index. Students exposed to five or more years of a junk food ban had lower body mass index equivalent to a decrease of about two pounds for an individual who is five feet, six inches tall.

Date: 2017
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://dx.doi.org/10.3138/cpp.2016-090 (text/html)
access restricted to subscribers

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:cpp:issued:v:43:y:2017:i:2:p:105-119

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.utpjournals.com/loi/cpp/

Access Statistics for this article

Canadian Public Policy is currently edited by Prof. Mike Veall

More articles in Canadian Public Policy from University of Toronto Press University of Toronto Press Journals Division 5201 Dufferin Street Toronto, Ontario, Canada M3H 5T8.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Iver Chong ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).