A Dynamic Model of the Effects of Child Care and Maternal Employment Choices on Children’s Body Weight

The rapid increase in the prevalence of childhood obesity in the United States has alarmed researchers who have increasingly sought to identify the cause of this public health problem. Despite a large number of potential explanations for the rise in obesity rates, the reserach to data has been methodological diverse with no clear consensus on the cause. This has greatly complicated and hindered the implementation of programs and policies aimed at reducing childhood obesity. In this paper, I add to the current research by examining two potential contributors to the rise in childhood obesity: maternal employment and after school child care usage. Specifically, I estimate the effects of time spent in child care and a mother’s hours of employment on childhood obesity using data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study Kindergarten Class of 1998-1999. I also address a potential self-selection problem by jointly estimating the child care and employment equations with the child’s health production function using an unobserved factors model that controls for unobserved heterogeneity. Preliminary findings where I do not control for endogeneity indicate that the impact of child care and maternal employment on the probability of being obese is positive and significant.