Download or read book Three Essays on the Economics of Obesity written by Kathryn E. Parr and published by . This book was released on 2012 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Three Essays on the Economics of Obesity written by Marina-Selini Katsaiti and published by . This book was released on 2009 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Three Essays in Health Economics written by Stephen Ransom Barnes and published by . This book was released on 2008 with total page 105 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Three Essays on the Economics of Health written by Yleana Pamela Ortiz Arevalo and published by . This book was released on 2007 with total page 374 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Three Essays in Health Economics written by Christina Ann Robinson and published by . This book was released on 2009 with total page 155 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Keywords: retiree health insurance, obesity, overweight, Food Stamp Program.

Download or read book Three Essays on the Economics of Obesity written by Christian A. Gregory and published by . This book was released on 2010 with total page 131 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The literature examining the relationship between obesity and wages has fairly consistently found that BMI has a negative impact on earnings for women, and less (if any) consequences for men. In the first study in my dissertation, co-authored with Christopher J. Ruhm, we relax the assumption--largely unquestioned in this research--that the conditional mean of wages is linear or piecewise linear in body mass index (BMI). Using data from the 1986 and 1999-2005 Panel Study of Income Dynamics, we estimate semi-parametric wage models that allow earnings to vary with BMI in a highly flexible manner. For women, the results show that earnings peak at levels far below the conventional threshold of obesity or even overweight. For men, our main estimates suggest a reasonably flat BMI-wage profile that peaks early in the "overweight'' category. The findings for females (and the IV estimates for males) suggest that it is not obesity but rather some other factor -- such as physical attractiveness -- that may be producing the observed relationship between BMI and wages. In the second essay of this dissertation, I examine the effect of obesity--and body mass more generally--on wages across the age distribution, using conventional parametric and more flexible semiparametric approaches. My parametric results suggest that the literature may overstate the effect of BMI and obesity on wages for women and almost certainly understates any negative association for men. For women, my results show that the negative effects of BMI and obesity are concentrated among women between 25 and 35 years old. While women in this age group experience an average 0.5 to 0.7 percent decrease in wages for each point increase in body mass (roughly 7.5 pounds), women over 40 will suffer a 0.25 percent decrease in wages for each extra point of body mass, and may not experience any wage penalty at all. Similarly, women who are 31-35 years old experience a 7.7 percent decrease in wages for being obese, while women over 40 experience only a 3.9 percent decrease. More flexible models largely confirm these results. For men, my parametric results indicate that, for those who are in their 20's or early 30's, BMI has no effect on wages or is associated with a small increase; this is consonant with the rest of the literature. However, for men over 35, the effect of extra body mass is clearly negative: an extra BMI point brings with it a 0.3 percent decrease in wages for men 36-40 years old, and for men over 40, an extra BMI point is associated with a 0.5 percent decrease in wages. More flexible semiparametric models suggest that the negative association of BMI and wages may be as much as three times more than these estimates in some ranges of BMI. For instance, these models suggest that men 36-40 years old who have a BMI between 27 and 37 experience a 0.9 - 1.2 percent decrease in wages for each extra BMI point, as opposed to a .3 percent decrease predicted by the linear model. Finally, in the third essay, I examine whether it has gotten easier to be obese over the last 25 years. Improvements in treatments for co-morbidities of obesity--high cholesterol, diabetes, sleep apnea and heart disease--over the last 25 years have made obesity less burdensome. I use data from the NHIS to examine whether such improvements have been borne out in obese persons' self-reports of health. My results suggest that between 1982 and 1996 obese women enjoyed significant gains in health relative to their normal weight counterparts. However, these gains do not appear to be due to improvement in treatment for co-morbidities of obesity; rather, income and especially education explain a large share of these health trends. For men, there seems to be little in the way of trends during these years of the survey. Results from the later years of the NHIS survey (1997-2006) suggest very little in the way of trends in self-reported health for obese men or women, but they suggest very large and significant improvements in health for obese women with coronary heart disease and obese male diabetics. All of these results should be interpreted with caution, as evidence of reporting anomalies in health appear to be present."--Abstract from author supplied metadata.

Download or read book Three Essays on Applied Health Economics written by Daniel M. Fuhrmann and published by . This book was released on 2010 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Three Essays in Health Economics written by Huilin Zhu and published by . This book was released on 2023 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This dissertation consists of three essays in health economics. The first chapter, "The Built Environment and Obesity in Philadelphia: The Use of Satellite Imagery and Transfer Learning," investigates the relationship between the built environment and health outcomes, specifically obesity prevalence in Philadelphia. The built environment can affect obesity prevalence through the physical activity environment and the food environment. The main innovation of this paper is to use a pre-trained convolutional neural network (CNN) to extract data representing the features of the built environment from high-resolution satellite imagery. Because of the lack of information on the food environment in satellite images, I combined a proxy variable for food access together with the feature variables to represent the characteristics of the built environment. I then employed the Elastic Net model to test the relationship between the feature variables of the built environment and obesity prevalence in Philadelphia. The results show that the built environment is highly associated with obesity prevalence. This study also provides some evidence that the features of the built environment that have been extracted from satellite imagery can reduce the role of food access in estimating obesity, as well as that adding these features can explain more variance of obesity. The second chapter, "Paid Maternity Leave and Child Health: Evidence from Urban China," uses the China Health and Nutrition Survey data to study whether the extension of paid maternity leave affects children's health outcomes in urban China. This paper uses the time variation of the implementation of a maternity leave policy across different provinces from 1987 to 1991 in China to estimate a two-way fixed-effects model. The results suggest that the expansion of paid maternity leave has no impact on children's health in urban China. The last chapter, titled "The Association between Paid Maternity Leave and Mothers' Health and Labor Outcomes in Urban China," studies whether the extension of paid maternity leave in 1987-1991 would affect the labor and health outcomes of mothers in urban China by using the China Health and Nutrition Survey data. Based on the variation in the implementation time of a paid maternity leave policy across different provinces, this paper employs a two-way fixed-effects model to estimate the policy impact on mothers' health and labor outcomes in China. The findings indicate that extending the duration of paid maternity leave is associated with an increased likelihood of mothers remaining employed after childbirth. However, the study also reveals a negative relationship between the extension of paid maternity leave and mothers' wage rates.

Download or read book Three Essays on the Economics of Health and Development written by Wesley Yin and published by . This book was released on 2005 with total page 137 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Three Essays in Health Economics written by Anna Choi and published by . This book was released on 2015 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This dissertation contains three essays in the field of health economics and health policy. The first essay studies the effects of legalizing medical use of marijuana on marijuana use and other risky health behaviors. I examine the restricted-use data from the National Survey of Drug Use and Health (NSDUH), which is a repeated cross sectional data set with state identifiers from 2004 to 2012. During this period, 9 states and Washington D.C. allowed patients with medical conditions to use marijuana. I estimate difference-in-differences (DID) models to examine the impacts of these policy changes on risky health behaviors. Allowing medical use of marijuana does not lead to higher marijuana use among the overall population and the youth. However, I find that medical marijuana laws (MMLs) are positively and significantly associated with marijuana use among males and heavy pain reliever users. The second essay is a joint work with John Cawley and tests a novel hypothesis: that these health disparities across education are to some extent due to differences in reporting error across education. We use data from the pooled National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) Continuous for 1999-2012, which include both self-reports and objective verification for an extensive set of health behaviors and conditions, including smoking, obesity, high blood pressure, high cholesterol and diabetes. We find that better educated individuals report their health behaviors more accurately. This is true for a wide range of behaviors and conditions, even socially stigmatized ones like smoking and obesity. We show that the differential reporting error across education leads to underestimates of the true health disparities across education that average 19.3%. The third essay is a joint work with Rachel Dunifon and studies how state regulations related to the quality of child care centers-such as teachers' education and degree requirements, staff to child ratios, maximum group size, and unannounced inspection compliance requirement-are predictive of children's health, developmental and cognitive outcomes. State level policies that are related to improving the productivity of child care center teachers by having a higher staff to child ratios and advanced schooling requirement are predictive of child's weight related outcomes and cognitive outcomes.

Download or read book Three Essays in Health Economics written by Alfred Wai Ching Kong and published by . This book was released on 2011 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first chapter of this thesis studies the relationship between obesity and school performance among children aged 16 to 17 years using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Children and Youth (NLSCY). OLS, quantile regression and IV estimates of obesity all indicate there is a negative relationship between obesity and school performance. Quantile regression estimates indicate being obese has a strong negative impact among children at the 75th percentile for the full sample. Being obese seems to have an impact on school performance among high achievers but not among lower achievers. In addition, IV estimate of obesity indicates a strong negative effect of obesity on academic performance. The second chapter studies the effect of retirement on various measures of health among Canadians using data from the Canadian Community Health Survey (CCHS). Both OLS regressions and a fuzzy regression discontinuity design are used to capture the effect of retirement on health. OLS estimates suggest retirement is associated with a more physically active and less stressful life among retirees in the full sample and the female subsample. On the other hand, 2SLS results from regression discontinuity design indicate retirement has a negative impact on mental health among retirees in the full sample. Retirement causes a decrease of 1.48 point (around 148% of one standard deviation) in the standardized mental health score, and the estimate is robust across different bandwidths. The third chapter uses a linear regression model to study peer effects on adolescent weight status using data from Add Health. OLS estimates suggest the adolescent's own BMI is positively related to average peers' BMI for the female subsample. Since OLS estimates would be inconsistent if omitted variable bias exists, the linear regression model is re-estimated under different degree of correlation between the main explanatory variable and unobservable factors. Estimates under those relative correlation restrictions suggest OLS estimates are quite robust when omitted variable bias exists. The sign of estimated peer effects would only change if the correlation between the main explanatory variable and unobservable factors is as much as three times the correlation between the main explanatory variable and other controls.

Download or read book Three Essays in Health Economics and Labor Economics written by Lei Li and published by . This book was released on 2013 with total page 161 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Three Essays on the Economics of Food and Health Behavior written by Elizbeth Robison Botkins and published by . This book was released on 2017 with total page 120 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In recent years the `farm to table' trend, the idea of understanding linkages between agricultural supply, food systems, and the food that is consumed, has been growing in popularity. This dissertation takes this idea a step further and examines topics on the progression from `farm to health outcomes.' It is important to recognize not only that food systems impact the way consumers eat, but that those food choices impact health outcomes and the way that medical care is consumed. The three essays of this dissertation examine three separate points along this continuum to improve the understanding of how food systems, food choice, health outcomes, and healthcare consumption interact. The first essay evaluates factors associated with school districts' decisions to participate in farm to school (FTS) programs. I leverage the USDA's Farm to School Census to analyze factors associated with FTS participation, the types of FTS activities implemented, and the challenges faced by participating school districts. I use spatially articulate data to estimate the spatial spillover effects of FTS participation. The results demonstrate that both school characteristics and local farm production factors are associated with FTS participation. The estimated spatial spillover effect is positive, suggesting that areas with a high penetration of FTS activities have lower barriers associated with implementing FTS programs. In my second essay, I shift to evaluating how parent-child pairs make the daily school lunch decision. Meals served in the National School Lunch Program (NSLP) are on average more healthful than alternatives, implying that increasing participation in the NSLP can improve nutrition for a large number of children. However, there is little understanding of the household decision process that determines participation in the NSLP. This study uses a parent-child choice experiment to assess the impact of both parent and child on NSLP participation. The results show that both have a significant impact on the chosen meal, where parents are concerned with meal palatability and nutrition, while the child only cares about palatability. The decision is also influenced by the household structure and demographics, and the inclusion of local foods in the school lunch option. My final essay evaluates how access to medical care can impact lifestyle choices. I evaluate if there is an ex ante moral hazard effect in health insurance markets. Ex ante moral hazard occurs when an individual takes on more risk knowing they will not bear the full cost of the consequences. In the case of health insurance, this could mean taking on unhealthful eating habits knowing that if these habits lead to illness the cost of care will be covered by insurance. Using panel data from the National Longitudinal Youth Survey 1997, I find evidence of an ex ante moral hazard effect in BMI, binge drinking, and smoking, suggesting that people take on less healthful behaviors, holding all else constant, when they have health insurance. The existence of ex ante moral hazard suggests that insurance companies can seek efficiency gains by finding ways to structure policies that diminish this moral hazard effect.

Download or read book Essays on the Economics of Obesity written by and published by . This book was released on 2011 with total page 164 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Three Essays in Health Economics written by and published by . This book was released on 2004 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This dissertation examines topics in health economics. The first study examines the relationship between access to retiree health insurance (RHI) and the decision to leave oneÃØâ'Ơâ"Øs career job. In this paper a Cox Proportional Hazard Model with time varying covariates is utilized to estimate the probability that an individual disengages from their career job, given they have not yet done so. Results indicate that those with access to RHI are significantly more likely to leave their career employer in all time periods than identical individuals without RHI. The second examines the relationship between a householdÃØâ'Ơâ"Øs Food Stamp Program participation, and child overweight and obesity. This paper considers a dynamic process for weight gainÃØâ'Ơ†explicitly modeling the role last periodÃØâ'Ơâ"Øs weight plays in determining this periodÃØâ'Ơâ"Øs weight. Results suggest that FSP participation does not significantly affect the deviation of a childÃØâ'Ơâ"Øs current BMI from the ideal level, indicating that FSP participation does not contribute to child overweight. The results also suggest that children tend toward their medically ideal weight. The third essay considers a related issue. There is a wide body of literature that examines the effect of FSP participation on obesity outcomes for adults and a smaller body of work that examines the same relationship for children. The literature focusing on adults finds that FSP participation is positively related to obesity in women, while work focusing on children fails to find a similar effect. This creates an interesting economic puzzle as most children live in the same household as their mother, and as such, the foods they consume and the effect of that food on their weight are expected to be similar. This paper directly addresses this puzzle, and examines the relationship between a motherÃØâ'Ơâ"Øs Food Stamp Program (FSP) participation, and obesity. Empirical results suggest that motherÃØâ'Ơâ"Øs are less likely to becom.

Download or read book Three Essays on the Economics of Nutrition written by Wiktoria Tafesse and published by . This book was released on 2019 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Three Essays on Economics of Health Behavior in China written by Shi Yuyan and published by . This book was released on 2011 with total page 65 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This dissertation consists of three essays, each focusing on one topic in economics of health behaviors in China. The first essay attempts to examine the determinants of alcohol demand with concentration on impact of alcohol price among Chinese adult population. The second essay estimates healthcare expenditure in China and evaluates the performance of econometric models. The objective of the third essay is to examine the time trend of obesity disparities across sociodemographic groups in school-aged youth population from 1991 to 2006 in mainland China.