RT Generic
T1 The impact of obesity on human capital accumulation: exploring the driving factors
A1 Carrasco, Raquel
A1 González González, Diego
A2 Universidad Carlos III de Madrid. Departamento de Economía, 
AB This study examines the impact of childhood obesity on the academic performance and human capital accumulation of high school students using data from Spain. To address potential endogeneity issues, we exploit the exogenous variation in obesity within peer groups. Specifically, we use the prevalence of obesity by gender in students' classes as an instrumentalvariable for individual obesity. The results indicate that obesity has a negative impact on academic achievement, particularly on general scores for girls, cognitive abilities as measured by CRT scores, financial abilities, and English grades for both boys and girls. In addition, we found a negative impact of obesity on girls' mathematics scores, while boys experienced a positive impact. We identify several key drivers of these effects, including teacher bias, psychological well-being, time preferences, and expectations related to labor market discrimination. Our analysis sheds light on the multiple influences of childhood obesity on academic outcomes and highlights the need for targeted interventions.
SN 2340-5031
YR 2024
FD 2024-04-09
LK https://hdl.handle.net/10016/43822
UL https://hdl.handle.net/10016/43822
LA eng
NO We thank Pablo Brañas, Jesús Carro, and seminar participants at Universidad Loyola for their comments. Financial support from MINECO/FEDER, grants PID2022-138960OB-I00, MDM2014-0431, and Comunidad de Madrid, Grants EPUC3M11 (V PRICIT) and H2019/HUM-5891, is gratefully acknowledged. This research was also supported by the European Unions Horizon Europe Research and Innovation Programme under Grant Agreement number 101095175. The usual disclaimer applies.
DS e-Archivo
RD 27 jul. 2024