EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

Physical Activity: Economic and Policy Factors

Melayne McInnes and Judith Shinogle

No 15039, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: While much research has focused on the costs of obesity and economic factors that drive obesity growth, little economic research has examined the factors that contribute to obesity -- physical inactivity and poor nutrition. This paper will examine correlates and predictors of physical activity over time with emphasis on economic factors. We use data for adults from the 2000-2005 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) survey that includes state and county codes for each individual that allows us to add supplementary data on state beer and cigarette taxes, local transportation costs, availability of gyms and recreational facilities, county unemployment, crime rates, and prices of related goods. We find that income and education has a strong and consistently positive effect on physical activity across specifications. Sin taxes have no effect on the likelihood of any exercise but generally have negative effects on vigorous exercise or moderate and vigorous exercise. Physical activity is more likely when there are more parks per capita in a county. Our results above are robust to the inclusion of weight status and use of flu shots (a measure of an individual's tendency towards prevention).

JEL-codes: I1 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2009-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hea
Note: EH
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Published as Physical Activity: Economic and Policy Factors , Melayne M. McInnes, Judith A. Shinogle. in Economic Aspects of Obesity , Grossman and Mocan. 2011

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w15039.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Chapter: Physical Activity: Economic and Policy Factors (2011) Downloads
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:nbr:nberwo:15039

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w15039

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().

 
Page updated 2025-03-31
Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:15039