Child Care Subsidies and Childhood Obesity. NBER Working Paper No. 15007

Autor/inn/en	Herbst, Chris M.; Tekin, Erdal
Institution	National Bureau of Economic Research
Titel	Child Care Subsidies and Childhood Obesity. NBER Working Paper No. 15007
Quelle	(2009) PDF als Volltext Verfügbarkeit
Sprache	englisch
Dokumenttyp	gedruckt; online; Monographie
Schlagwörter	Child Care; Grants; Obesity; Low Income Groups; Children; Body Composition; Kindergarten; Child Health + Suchen Sie Ihr Suchwort? Kinderfürsorge; Kinderbetreuung; Grant; Finanzielle Beihilfe; Adipositas; Child; Kind; Kinder
Abstract	Child care subsidies play a critical role in facilitating the transition of disadvantaged mothers from welfare to work. However, little is known about the influence of these policies on children's health and well-being. In this paper, we study the impact of subsidy receipt on low-income children's weight outcomes in the fall and spring of kindergarten. The goals of our empirical analysis are twofold. We first utilize standard OLS and fixed effects methods to explore body mass index as well as measures of overweight and obesity. We then turn to quantile regression to address the possibility that subsidy receipt has heterogeneous effects on children's weight at different points in the BMI distribution. Results suggest that subsidy receipt is associated with increases in BMI and a greater likelihood of being overweight and obese. We also find substantial variation in subsidy effects across the BMI distribution. In particular, child care subsidies have no effect on BMI at the lower end of the distribution, inconsistent effects in the middle of the distribution, and large effects at the top of the distribution. Our results point to the use of non-parental child care, particularly centerbased services, as the key mechanism through which subsidies influence children's weight outcomes. (As Provided).
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Erfasst von	ERIC (Education Resources Information Center), Washington, DC
Update	2017/4/10