Parents labor supply and childhood obesity: Evidence from Scotland

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Highlights

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    The article examines the effect of parental employment and hours worked on children’s BMI and the likelihood that the child is overweight or obese.

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    We also explore the channels through which parental employment affects children’s weight status outcomes.

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    We find a positive association between maternal hours worked, and child BMI and likelihood that her child is overweight or obese.

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    Our findings that the more parents work, the more TV children watch and the less regularly children walk or go to a park are some of the channels.

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    The findings have policy implications in the context of the increasing maternal employment and prevalence of childhood obesity worldwide.

Abstract

More than one third of children worldwide are overweight or obese. This epidemic proportion makes obesity the most common chronic disease among children with short and long-term adverse effects on both affected children and society. This research examines the effect of the extensive and intensive margins of parental employment on children’s body mass index (BMI) z-score and likelihood of belonging to different weight status categories in Scotland. We also investigate some mechanisms driving the relationship. The results suggest that there is a positive association between maternal hours worked and child BMI or the probability that a child is overweight or obese. Our analysis of the channels shows that this is attributable to the less time children spend doing physical activity and the more time they watch TV, the more the parents work. The findings are useful for the design of policies whose goal is to improve children’s weight outcomes given parental employment.

Introduction

Pediatric obesity is a growing public health concern. One in three children in the European WHO member states is overweight or obese (World Health Organization, 2020). In Scotland and in the US, one in five children suffers from obesity (NHS Health Scotland, 2019; CDC, 2018), and about a third of the children living in the most deprived areas in Scotland have the disorder (NHS Health Scotland, 2019). In addition, the prevalence of this health issue has more than tripled worldwide since the 1970s causing an obesity epidemic (CDC, 2018). Obese children are more likely to be obese as adults, which in turn increases the risk of cardiovascular diseases, type two diabetes, some types of cancer, mental disorders, orthopedic, social and psychological problems (World Health Organization, 2020, CDC, 2016).

The labor force participation rate of mothers has been increasing since the 1970s (BLS, 2010). Between 2000 and 2019, the employment rate of mothers and fathers in Scotland has increased from 66 % to 77 %, and from 89 % to 93 %, respectively. In approximately 73 % of the families, both parents were in the labor market in 2019, and about 30 % of both genders report difficulties with fulfilling adequate childcare responsibilities while working (Office of National Statistics, 2019).

With both childhood obesity rate and parental employment rising, it is important to examine whether there is a relationship between the two tendencies. Understanding the potential consequences of working more and an analysis of the mechanisms driving the relationship might help prevent and manage obesity at an early age.

This paper addresses the question of whether parental employment and hours worked are associated with children’s body mass index (BMI) and prevalence of obesity. We also investigate several mechanisms which are likely to drive the above-mentioned relationship with an emphasis on physical activity and activities contributing to a less sedentary lifestyle. Specifically, we extend the body of literature on obesity and parental employment by estimating the impact of working and hours worked by both parents on the BMI of the child and the likelihood that (s)he has healthy weight, or suffers from overweight or obesity. We base our analysis on Scotland, a country which has not been previously examined in the context of childhood weight status and offers a rich data set which gives a stronger claim of causality than much of the prior literature. We finally discuss the policy implications of the findings.

The results suggest that the more a mother works, the less likely it is that her child will have a healthy BMI. We find a statistically significant positive association between maternal hours worked and the likelihood that a child is overweight, obese or morbidly obese. We also find evidence that the primary channel driving this result is that children of working parents walk less and watch more TV. These findings can help governments develop, monitor and evaluate policies aimed at preventing childhood obesity by encouraging active lifestyle and physical activity of children at an early age.

The remainder of this paper is structured as follows. Section 2 reviews the existing literature on childhood obesity and parental employment. Section 3 provides background information on childhood obesity and parental employment in Scotland. Section 4 presents the identification strategy. Section 5 discusses the data and provides summary statistics of the variables used in the empirical analysis. The results and an analysis of the mechanisms of the effect of interest are available in Section 6. Section 7 outlines the policy implications, and Section 8 concludes the paper.

Section snippets

Literature review

Research on the association between parental employment and child weight has been conducted mainly for the US (Anderson et al., 2003a, 2003b, Chia, 2008; Fertig et al., 2009; Ziol-Guest et al., 2013; Datar et al., 2014; Courtemanche et al., 2017) and Canada (Phipps et al., 2006). Most authors focus on mothers (Anderson et al., 2003a, 2003b) and find a positive relationship between employment or maternal hours worked and children’s BMI or likelihood of being overweight.1

Background information

Between 1998 and 2017, the proportion of overweight children under 12 in Scotland has been fluctuating but generally increasing between 26 % and 33 % (Scottish Government, 2020), and for adults suffering from obesity, between 52 % and 65 % (Scottish Government, 2018, Scottish Government 2020). The problem affects both genders7 (

Methods

This section specifies the model and presents the identification strategy used to evaluate the effect of parental employment on children’s weight-related outcomes, and to investigate the channels which explain the results. Parental employment is likely to determine the frequency and the amount of time a child spends outdoors, visits green spaces, walks, exercises, watches TV, and uses a computer i.e., ChannelVariableit=f(MaternalLSit,PartnerLSit,Xit). In turn, these outcomes influence

Variables

This study requires data on children’s BMI, parental employment status and variables which can at least partly explain the relationship between parental employment and children’s weight outcomes. Data are extracted from Growing Up in Scotland (GUS) – Birth cohort 1.

GUS is a longitudinal, nationally representative dataset which tracks 5217 children born in 2004/05 from birth to the age of 10. Parents have been interviewed on a regular basis to collect information on the composition of the

Major findings

Table 3 presents our main estimates of the effect of parental labor supply on child BMI14 . In Panel A, we explore the effect of the extensive margin of labor supply whereas Panel B shows the effect of the hours worked by the parents. Panels C and D examine the cases in which, respectively, only the mother, or only her partner is employed. In Panel E, we distinguish between part-time and full-time

Policy implications

We find that working more increases the risk of childhood overweight status and obesity through the less time parents spend with the child doing physical activity and the more time children watch TV. In the context of the increasing maternal employment and prevalence of childhood obesity worldwide, these findings have several policy implications.

First, awareness of the issue and the relevant findings are useful for prevention of the adverse consequences of childhood obesity. Awareness campaigns

Conclusion

In this paper, we examine the association between parental employment and childhood BMI percentile and prevalence of overweight status and obesity. We further explore some channels which partially explain the relationship. The results provide evidence of a positive link between maternal hours worked and child BMI. Longer hours worked by a mother increase the likelihood that her child is overweight or obese and make it less likely that the child is of healthy weight. We find several channels.

Author statement

Stefani Milovanska-Farrington declares that this research is entirely her work. She wrote the introduction, literature review, methodology, results, policy implications and conclusions. She also performed the empirical analysis through the statistical software package Stata ®, wrote, reviewed and edited the manuscript.

Animal and human subjects’ statement

The author declares that this research does not involve the use of human or animal subjects.

Funding statement

The author declares that she did not apply for funding for this research.

Declaration of Competing Interest

Stefani Milovanska-Farrington declares no conflict of interest.

Acknowledgements

The author is grateful for helpful comments and suggestions provided by the editor of Economics and Human Biology, Dr. Averett, three anonymous referees, and Stephen Farrington.

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