The Effect of Socio-economic Status on Obesity and Related Health Outcomes

Download or read book The Effect of Socio-economic Status on Obesity and Related Health Outcomes written by Michael Johannes Grabner and published by . This book was released on 2009 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Substantial evidence documents the correlation between socio-economic status (SES) and health outcomes. People with higher incomes or more education are usually in better health as well. But correlation does not imply causation, and the past decade has seen an increased effort to discern causal relationships using natural experiments. One of the health variables of particular interest is excess body weight, which has received much attention as many countries experienced a surge in obesity. This dissertation examines three topics related to SES and health: First, how does obesity (measured using Body Mass Index, BMI) vary with SES, and have these relationships changed over time? How do these trends differ by gender and race, and across three major national data sets? Second, does education have a causal effect on obesity? I examine this issue using compulsory schooling laws as a source of exogenous variation in education. Third, is there a causal connection between education and other health outcomes, such as self-rated health or hypertension? Results presented in Chapter 1 suggest that disparities between low- and medium-SES groups have almost disappeared over the last 30 years, while high-SES groups continue to enjoy an advantage. In terms of BMI trends, Hispanic males are comparable to white and black males, while Hispanic females are in-between white and black females. The three datasets examined yield different prevalence rates but similar trends. The second chapter, using data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey from 1971 to 1980, finds a strong and statistically significant negative effect of additional schooling on BMI for women and no effect for men. These results are robust to weak instruments and various other validity checks. In the third chapter, using the same methodology and data set as in Chapter 2, I find strong correlations between educational attainment and several other health outcomes. Weak instruments do not permit any conclusions about causality in this analysis. This work contributes to the literature by providing the most credible estimate to date of the causal impact of schooling on obesity and documenting trends in the association between SES and obesity over the last 30 years.