Does Leaving School in an Economic Downturn Persistently Affect Body Weight? Evidence from Panel Data

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/irel.12128
• Author: Johanna Catherine Maclean
• Published date: 01 January 2016
• Date: 01 January 2016

Does Leaving School in an Economic Downturn

Persistently Affect Body Weight? Evidence from

Panel Data*

JOHANNA CATHERINE MACLEAN

In this study I test whether leaving school when the state unemployment rate is

high persistently affects body weight. Because the time and location of school

leaving are potentially endogenous, I predict the economic conditions at school

leaving with instruments based on birth date and residence at age 14. My findings

show that by age 40 men (women) who left school when the state unemployment

rate was high have lower (higher) body weight.

Introduction

Because it is both common and associated with large social costs, obesity is

arguably one of the most important health behaviors to study from an eco-

nomic perspective. The prevalence of obesity in the United States has risen

substantially since the 1970s and recent data suggest that 36 percent of adults

are obese (Flegal et al. 2012). Obesity is the second leading cause of pre-

ventable death in the United States (Mokdad et al. 2004) and contributes to a

host of morbidities including diabetes, cancer, and heart disease (Dixon 2010).

As a result, obesity raises U.S. national medical care costs by $190.2 billion

per year (Cawley and Meyerhoefer 2012). Moreover, obesity lowers labor mar-

ket productivity (Cawley 2004) and may impede national security by limiting

the supply of military recruits meeting fitness standards (Cawley and Maclean

2012a, 2010b).

This study investigates one potential downstream cause of body weight:

leaving school in an economic downturn. Specifically, I compare the age 40

body weight of individuals who left school when the state unemployment rate

*The author’saffiliation is Temple University, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Email: tuf73732@temple.edu.

JEL: I1, I12, J2.

This research was conducted with restricted access to Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) data. The views

expressed here do not necessarily reflect the views of the BLS. The author would like to thank Olga Yaku-

sheva and participants at the 2014 American Society of Health Economists Conference for helpful com-

ments. All errors are the author’s.

INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS, Vol. 55, No. 1 (January 2016). ©2015 Regents of the University of California

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Road, Oxford, OX4 2DQ, UK.

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was high with the age 40 body weight of individuals who left school when the

state unemployment rate was low.

As such, this study makes several important contributions to the economic

literature. First, it adds to the growing line of research that documents the

importance of leaving school in an economic downturn by examining a previ-

ously unconsidered outcome: body weight. Previous work has mainly focused

on labor-market outcomes (Genda, Kondo, and Ohta 2010; Kahn 2010; Ore-

opoulos, von Wachter, and Heisz 2012; Oyer 2006, 2008). Maclean (2013)

and Cutler, Huang, and Lleras-Muney (2015) are exceptions. Specifically,

Maclean (2013) examines how leaving school in an economic downturn can

persistently impact mental and physical health while Cutler,Huang, and

Lleras-Muney (2015) consider a range of health outcomes using data from

European countries. Second, this study extends the health economics literature

on contemporaneous economic downturns and health (Ruhm 2000, 2005).

While previous studies have examined the short-run effects in the general pop-

ulation, I examine the persistent effects of experiencing an economic downturn

during the school-to-work transition, an important period for forming attach-

ment to the labor market (Neumark 2002). Third, this study builds on an

emerging line of research that documents the importance of initial occupation

on later health outcomes and behaviors (Fletcher, Sindelar, and Yamaguchi

2011; Kelly et al. 2011).

Apart from these suggestive findings, there are more conceptual reasons to

study the effects of leaving school in an economic downturn on body weight.

Body weight is a stock variable that represents the cumulative effects of diet

and exercise decisions made across the life course. Thus, it is important to

carefully examine downstream events that influence these decisions and thus

lead to persistent differences in body weight. For example, if experiencing a

labor-market shock impacts an individual’s life-course income, time costs, and

marriage outcomes then this shock may persistently alter the full costs of

maintaining a healthy body weight and the amount of income that can be allo-

cated to purchasing body-weight inputs.

Neuroscience research lends an additional rationale for obesity determinants

during the school-to-work transition. The typical school-leaving age (late teens

to mid-20s) is an important developmental period for the prefrontal cortex

region of the brain (Clark, Thatcher, and Tapert 2008; Clark and Winters

2002; Dahl 2004; Klingberg et al. 1999; Schmithorst et al. 2002; Spear 2000;

Zhang et al. 2005). Importantly, prefrontal cortex activity is associated with

obesity and other health behaviors through self-regulation and impulse control

(Le et al. 2006, 2007; Volkow et al. 2009). Thus experiencing a labor-market

shock during this period may lead to persistent differences in body weight by

altering the environment in which important brain development occurs, inde-

Downturn and Weight / 123