Physical activity and childhood obesity

More than one-third of American children and teenagers are considered overweight or obese. Unfortunately, obesity is often a persistent and dangerous health condition that is costly to manage. It is one of the leading causes of preventable death and combating the condition has become a national priority. To this end the two most common recommendations are: eat a healthier diet and increase physical activity. Using data from both the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 (NLSY79) and the NLSY79 Children and Young Adult files, this study examines the relationship between physical activity and the persistence of childhood obesity. More specifically, Cox-proportional hazard techniques are used to quantify the impact a child’s physical activity has on the likelihood that they exit an overweight or obese state. Results indicate that being physically active reduces the probability that an overweight or obese child remains overweight or obese. Strikingly, there is not a significant difference between children who are active daily and those who are active a few times per week, suggesting that being active may be more important than the frequency of activity.     

Maternal labour supply and childhood obesity in Canada: evidence from the NLSCY

Abstract.  This paper investigates the socioeconomic factors affecting childhood overweight and obesity in Canada using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Children and Youth. In particular, I attempt to address the issue of whether an increase in the mother's work intensity is associated with an increase in the risk of the child's becoming overweight or obese. I also attempt to evaluate the causality of this relationship and the mechanisms that might facilitate this link. The results suggest that an increase in the mother's work intensity when she first returned to work in the period after the child's birth and before the child started school is associated with an increase in the risk of the child's becoming overweight or obese later in childhood. Conditional on the mother returning to work in the period between the child's birth and the start of school for the child, a 10-hour increase in the number of hours worked per week when the mother first returned to work is associated with an increase in the probability that the child later becomes overweight or obese that is in the range of 2.5 to 4 percentage points.     

The relationship between childhood obesity and food insecurity: a nonparametric analysis

Childhood obesity and food insecurity are major public health concerns in the United States and other developed countries. Research on the relationship between the two has provided mixed results across a variety of data sets and empirical methods. Common throughout this research, however, is the use of parametric frameworks for empirical analyses. This study moves beyond parametric methods by examining the relationship between childhood obesity and food insecurity among low-income children with nonparametric regression techniques. We examine data from the Child Development Supplement (CDS) of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID), a nationally representative data set from the US. Consistent with recent work, our parametric analyses indicate that there is no statistically significant relationship between childhood obesity and food insecurity. In contrast, our nonparametric results indicate that the probability of being obese varies markedly with the level of food insecurity being experienced by the child. Moreover, this relationship differs across relevant subgroups including those defined by gender, race/ethnicity and income. Fully understanding the relationship between childhood obesity and food insecurity has significant policy implications.     

Consumption Inequality in China: Theory and Evidence from the China Health and Nutrition Survey

We investigate consumption inequality in China both theoretically by constructing a theoretical model that delineates the transmission channels by which income shocks affect consumption and empirically through an Unequally Spaced Dynamic Panel Data model estimation. We find that China is experiencing consumption inequality with the full partial insurance of consumption against both permanent and transitory income shocks, although the impact of both types of shock are larger than the case of the United States. The results are due to precautionary savings motives of the Chinese. We further document how income becomes more dispersed in China and show how the family background of a child affects his outcome to a large extent. Policy implications based on our findings are proposed.     

Childhood obesity and the income gradient: evidence from Australia

This article examines the dynamic nature of human capital formation in the context of childhood obesity and the association of household income and childhood obesity in Australia using the first five waves of the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children. Our results show a strong evidence of dynamic nature of child obesity: the lag obesity is a significant and robust predictor of obesity in the current period. We also found that the main channel for childhood obesity is inter-generational trait: the probability of obesity in children born to an obese mother or father is 15% higher than that of other children. Other important determinants are lifestyle factors, including the consumption of drinks with a high sugar content and the amount of time watching TV. Income becomes an insignificant determinant of childhood obesity once we control for unobserved individual heterogeneity.     

On the determinants of obesity: evidence from the UAE

This article investigates the possible determinants of being overweight and obese in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), controlling for age and education status. We use a novel dataset constructed from survey responses of university undergraduate students. Using OLS, logistic and ordered logistic regressions, we find that male, affluent and nonnational students face a higher risk of being obese (or overweight). The results also show that cultural and geographical factors interact with some behavioural aspects related to lifestyle in determining weight status. Students originating from other Middle East and North Africa countries exhibit higher body mass index (BMI) and odds of being obese with higher frequency of eating out and more computer use. Unexpectedly, fast food consumption and lack of exercise do not seem to contribute to higher risks of being overweight/obese.     

Smartphone use,off-farm employment,and women's decision-making power: Evidence from rural China

Empowering women is an important goal of the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals, and studies have proposed various strategies to achieve this goal. However, few have examined the role of smartphone use in empowering women in decision-making and its mechanism. Therefore, this study analyzes how smartphone use affects women's decision-making power and explores whether this influence is due to women's off-farm employment mechanisms. For this purpose, the study uses the survey data of 1110 households in rural China and the endogenous treatment regression model for analysis. The control function approach addresses the selection bias of off-farm employment. The results show that smartphone use significantly increases women's decision-making power, partially channeled through increasing women's off-farm employment. The mechanism effect is robust to using both binary and intensive measurements of off-farm employment. Therefore, a policy to improve access to internet facilities and smartphone use could improve women's decision-making power through employment in the off-farm sector.     

Salaried employment and earnings in Indonesia: new evidence on the selection bias

This article uses household survey data to estimate the determinants of earnings in Indonesia, a country where nonsalaried work is widespread and earnings data are available for salaried employees only. We deal with the selection bias by estimating a Full-Information Maximum Likelihood (FIML) system of equations, where selection into the labour market is modelled in a multinomial setting. We find that some estimated parameters of the earnings equation differ from a binomial selection procedure by Heckman (1979 Heckman, J. 1979. Sample selection bias as a specification error. Econometrica, 47: 153–61. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]), in particular for those variables with the strongest impact on the selection into the different labour-market statuses. However, the estimated returns to education are unaffected, even when we deal with the endogeneity of educational attainment following Duflo (2001 Duflo, E. 2001. Schooling and labour market consequences of school construction in Indonesia: evidence from an unusual policy experiment. American Economic Review, 91: 795–813. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]). Overall, our findings show that the choice of the selection rule affects the estimates of the earnings determinants in the Indonesian labour market.     

The puzzle on the causality of the productivity and employment growth: evidence from firm-level data

This article analyses the causality between the firm’s employment and productivity growth based on the population of manufacturing firms registered in Slovenia in the 1994–2003 period. By using the system GMM estimator, we show that the employment–productivity growth trade-off does not exist. Moreover, we find significant complementarities between employment and productivity growth, mostly driven by SMEs and firms from high-tech industries. Accordingly, we argue that the job-creation policy and productivity-promoting policy are complementary rather than trade-offs and that policymakers should focus on the optimal policy mix that provides the highest aggregate effect with regard to all growth aspects. Further, significant differences among the factors of employment and productivity growth suggest that job-creation policy measures are most successful when targeted at younger export-oriented firms with high total factor productivity levels and capital-intensive production. Meanwhile, the outcome of policy measures aimed at promoting productivity increases with a firm’s capital intensity and size up to the threshold employment level and with the intensity of market competition.     

The impact of public employment on labour market performance: evidence from African countries

Using census data for Ghana, Mali and Mozambique, we study the long-term impact of public sector employment on local labour markets. We find that the public sector crowds out private employment and induces skilled workers to queue for a public job, thus increasing their unemployment rate. In addition, a growing public sector fosters employment in the tradable and nontradable sectors, remarkably for the unskilled, and the reallocation of unskilled workers away from agriculture.     

An empirical analysis on the determinants of overweight and obesity in China

Overweight and obesity in adult populations is considered to be a growing epidemic worldwide, and appears to be rapidly increasing in China. From 1992 to 2002, the incidence of overweight in adults increased by 39.0%, while that of obesity doubled. To identify the determinants of adult overweight and obesity in China, micro-level data from a questionnaire survey entitled the ‘Preference Parameters Study,’ which was conducted by the Global Centers of Excellence programme at Osaka University, were analysed. In addition to the entire sample, data from urban and rural subsamples were also analysed in order to investigate whether the determinants of overweight and obesity differed. The results suggested that body mass index (BMI) is correlated with subjective well-being, gender, age, labour intensity and drinking and eating habits among urban respondents, and with age, monthly income, number of siblings and eating habits among rural respondents.     

Financial literacy and retirement planning: evidence from China

We study the relationship between financial literacy and retirement planning in China. We find that higher scores on the financial literacy questions are associated not only with a higher probability of retirement planning, but also a higher propensity to actively use financial markets for retirement preparation. These relationships are robust to taking into account the endogeneity of financial literacy.     

Health returns to modern heating: evidence from China

This study analyses the health effects of modern heating, using China’s centralized home heating infrastructure as a natural experiment. The underlying health mechanism is that the recipients of modern heating do not need to rely on traditional fuels to heat their homes and thus suffer from less exposure to indoor air pollution. Furthermore, the improved quality of heating leads to health improvements. This article exploits spatial and time variation in the implementation of China’s centralized heating program, utilizing a difference-in-difference framework. Spatial variation takes the form of a discrete geographical cut-off between regions that receive centralized home heating and those that do not. Results show that areas with centralized heating have a 0.13% decrease in perinatal deaths and a decrease of 1.17% in the proportion of low-birth-weight infants. This translates into about 7000 fewer deaths and about 60,000 fewer low-birth-weight infants each year. Hence, there are enormous health benefits to the public provision of modern heat as a substitute for traditional heating methods, which are shown to be injurious to early-life health. These results strongly suggest that policymakers in developing countries should consider promoting cleaner heating methods.     

High-speed rail and inventory reduction: firm-level evidence from China

Using a balanced panel of manufacturing firms from China between 2007 and 2013, we estimate that being connected to a high-speed rail (HSR) system leads to 9.5% reduction in local firms’ input inventory spending. The effect is stronger for downstream industries and private enterprises. A back-of-envelope calculation suggests that each dollar of HSR investment reduces input inventory stock by 12 cents, which is significantly larger than the effects found in previous studies based on highway or road investment. Declines in transportation and communication cost, as well as agglomeration effect, are identified as plausible mechanisms. Our findings reveal a micro channel through which improved transport infrastructure brings about economic gains, and contribute to the cost-benefit assessment of HSR investment.     

非农就业、母亲照料与儿童健康——来自中国乡村的证据

中国农村女性参与非农就业的比例显著提高,对于增进家庭收入、减少贫困起到了积极的作用。但从女性在家庭中的双重身份——挣取收入者和照看孩子的主要人员出发,其劳动模式和供给行为的改变对于下一代福利的影响和人力资本的积累所起到的作用却是不确定的。本文通过将农村地区妇女的劳动供给状况进行区分,就其劳动参与行为对孩童健康状况的影响进行了探讨。在控制其他因素的情况下,母亲额外单位的劳动时间的增加对孩子的健康状况具有显著的负向影响,且同样的母亲非农劳动时间的增加对于孩童健康的负面影响大于农业劳动时间增加的影响程度,而母亲收入增加对孩子健康状况具有显著的正向影响;边际效果分析表明母亲收入增加对孩子健康的正向影响难以抵销劳动时间增加所带来的负面效果。孩子性别不同所受到的影响亦不同,女童相对而言处于健康的劣势地位。虽然母亲的劳动供给有助于缩小孩子营养状况的性别差距,但却是以所有儿童的健康状况下降为代价的。研究结果预期具有较强的政策含义。     

The J-curve: evidence from commodity trade between UK and China

China is often accused of manipulating its currency to gain international competitiveness. Previous studies have tried to address this issue by investigating the impact of yuan depreciation on China’s trade balance. Not only have they failed to establish the link between the Chinese exchange rate and its trade balance with the rest of the world but also between China and her major trading partners. In this article, we consider the China–UK trade balance and disaggregate their trade flows by commodity. Out of the 47 industries considered, we show that the real depreciation has favourable short-run effects in most industries. However, the short-run effects last into the long run only in seven cases.     

ICT and employment generation: evidence from Turkish manufacturing

This study is said to be the first attempt in exploring the impact of information and communication technologies (ICT) capital on employment generation/destruction in Turkish manufacturing industry by using labour demand estimation framework. The analysis is based on firm-level data, which includes all firms employing 20 or more employees in Turkish manufacturing for the period 2003–2013. Our findings based on system GMM estimations show that ICT has employment-enhancing effects in Turkish manufacturing. Moreover, our results provide the evidence that tangible ICT capital has stronger employment generation impact than that of intangible ICT capital in medium- and low-tech industries.     

Paid Maternity Leave and Breastfeeding in Urban China

ABSTRACT

Using data from the 2010 Survey on Chinese Women's Social Status, this contribution estimates the effect of paid maternity leave on breastfeeding duration in urban China during the 1988–2008 period. The analysis applies a policy-based identification strategy to control for the endogenous relationship between paid leave entitlements and breastfeeding decisions. Estimates show that paid maternity leave has a strong positive effect on breastfeeding duration. Specifically, if the length of paid leave increases by thirty days, then the probability of breastfeeding for at least six months increases by 12 percentage points. Between 1988 and 2008, the average length of paid leave for mothers without a college education decreased by twenty-three days, which reduced these mothers’ probability of breastfeeding for at least six months by 9 percentage points. These results support the view that paid maternity leave enhances the ability of employed women to sustain breastfeeding and call for universal paid leave entitlements.     

Capital structure choice and ownership: evidence from electronics enterprises in China

Empirical studies on capital structure mostly focus on listed companies and also on countries other than China. In this paper, we employ a panel dataset for 4,716 large and medium-sized enterprises in the Chinese electronics industry during the period 2005–2007 in order to investigate the determinants of their capital structure choice. Using the debt ratio as the dependent variable, we find that firm size and potential growth have a positive effect on the debt ratio whereas profitability has a negative effect. We show that decisions on the debt ratio are based on mixed factors that the various theories suggest. The unlisted Chinese companies which are unable to access to the securities market are prone to acquire bank loans as sources for funds which provides room for the modification of pecking order theory based on listed companies. As to ownership structure, we find that those Chinese electronics enterprises with higher portions of foreign equity tend to have lower debt ratios.     

Intergenerational transmission of education in China: New evidence from the Chinese Cultural Revolution

This paper estimates the effect of parental education on children's education by using instruments generated by the Chinese Cultural Revolution, and further explores the mechanisms of this causal relationship. Several important findings stand out from our empirical analyses. We find a larger intergenerational persistence in education for higher level in urban areas but for a lower level of education in rural areas. The main results from instrumental variable estimation show that the nurture effect is larger and more significant for fathers than for mothers. A deeper investigation of the mechanism behind this nurture effect informs us that a father's education passes on to his children's education partly through the income channel. Another notable finding is that even after controlling for fathers’ income, parental education still has a significantly positive effect on children's education through the nurture effect. This indicates that beyond the income channel, there may exist other channels such as better home environment, which deserve to be explored in future research.