IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cje/issued/v41y2008i1p217-242.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Maternal labour supply and childhood obesity in Canada: evidence from the NLSCY

Author

Listed:
  • Yee Fei Chia

Abstract

This paper investigates the socioeconomic factors affecting childhood overweight and obesity in Canada using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Children and Youth. In particular, I attempt to address the issue of whether an increase in the mother's work intensity is associated with an increase in the risk of the child's becoming overweight or obese. I also attempt to evaluate the causality of this relationship and the mechanisms that might facilitate this link. The results suggest that an increase in the mother's work intensity when she first returned to work in the period after the child's birth and before the child started school is associated with an increase in the risk of the child's becoming overweight or obese later in childhood. Conditional on the mother returning to work in the period between the child's birth and the start of school for the child, a 10-hour increase in the number of hours worked per week when the mother first returned to work is associated with an increase in the probability that the child later becomes overweight or obese that is in the range of 2.5 to 4 percentage points.

Suggested Citation

  • Yee Fei Chia, 2008. "Maternal labour supply and childhood obesity in Canada: evidence from the NLSCY," Canadian Journal of Economics, Canadian Economics Association, vol. 41(1), pages 217-242, February.
    • Handle: RePEc:cje:issued:v:41:y:2008:i:1:p:217-242
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Daniel Miller, 2011. "Maternal Work and Child Overweight and Obesity: The Importance of Timing," Journal of Family and Economic Issues, Springer, vol. 32(2), pages 204-218, June.
    2. Shelly Lundberg & Aloysius Siow, 2017. "Canadian contributions to family economics," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 50(5), pages 1304-1323, December.
    3. Cawley, John & Liu, Feng, 2012. "Maternal employment and childhood obesity: A search for mechanisms in time use data," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 10(4), pages 352-364.
    4. Gwozdz, Wencke & Sousa-Poza, Alfonso & Reisch, Lucia A. & Ahrens, Wolfgang & Eiben, Gabriele & M. Fernandéz-Alvira, Juan & Hadjigeorgiou, Charalampos & De Henauw, Stefaan & Kovács, Eva & Lauria, Fabio, 2013. "Maternal employment and childhood obesity – A European perspective," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 32(4), pages 728-742.
    5. Milovanska-Farrington, Stefani, 2020. "Parents labor supply and childhood obesity: Evidence from Scotland," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 38(C).
    6. Sen, Anindya & Entezarkheir, Mahdiyeh & Wilson, Alan, 2010. "Obesity, smoking, and cigarette taxes: Evidence from the Canadian Community Health Surveys," Health Policy, Elsevier, vol. 97(2-3), pages 180-186, October.
    7. Peng Nie & Alfonso Sousa-Poza, 2014. "Maternal employment and childhood obesity in China: evidence from the China Health and Nutrition Survey," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 46(20), pages 2418-2428, July.
    8. Morrissey, Taryn W., 2013. "Trajectories of growth in body mass index across childhood: Associations with maternal and paternal employment," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 95(C), pages 60-68.
    9. Haeil Jung & Chaeyoung Chang, 2016. "Is Mothers’ Work Related to Childhood Weight Changes in the United States?," Journal of Family and Economic Issues, Springer, vol. 37(4), pages 581-593, December.
    10. Datar, Ashlesha & Nicosia, Nancy & Shier, Victoria, 2014. "Maternal work and children's diet, activity, and obesity," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 107(C), pages 196-204.
    11. Georgia S. Papoutsi & Andreas C. Drichoutis & Rodolfo M. Nayga Jr., 2013. "The Causes Of Childhood Obesity: A Survey," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 27(4), pages 743-767, September.
    12. Mohammad Jakaria & Rejaul Karim Bakshi & M. Mehedi Hasan, 2022. "Is maternal employment detrimental to children’s nutritional status? Evidence from Bangladesh," Review of Development Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 26(1), pages 85-111, February.
    13. Fouzia & Durdana Qaiser Gillani & Shahbaz Ahmad, 2021. "Impact of Female Employment and Education on Child Health Care: A Case Study of Pakistan," Journal of Economic Impact, Science Impact Publishers, vol. 3(2), pages 107-112.
    14. Kazakova, Yuliya, 2022. "Maternal employment and childhood obesity in Russia," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 47(C).
    15. Jens Bonke & Jane Greve, 2012. "Children’s health-related life-styles: how parental child care affects them," Review of Economics of the Household, Springer, vol. 10(4), pages 557-572, December.
    16. Y. F. Chia, 2013. "Dollars and pounds: the impact of family income on childhood weight," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 45(14), pages 1931-1941, May.
    17. Brown, Judith E. & Broom, Dorothy H. & Nicholson, Jan M. & Bittman, Michael, 2010. "Do working mothers raise couch potato kids? Maternal employment and children's lifestyle behaviours and weight in early childhood," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 70(11), pages 1816-1824, June.
    18. Greve, Jane, 2011. "New results on the effect of maternal work hours on children's overweight status: Does the quality of child care matter?," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 18(5), pages 579-590, October.
    19. Ziol-Guest, Kathleen M. & Dunifon, Rachel E. & Kalil, Ariel, 2013. "Parental employment and children's body weight: Mothers, others, and mechanisms," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 95(C), pages 52-59.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • J13 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Fertility; Family Planning; Child Care; Children; Youth
    • I12 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Health Behavior

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cje:issued:v:41:y:2008:i:1:p:217-242. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Prof. Werner Antweiler (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/ceaaaea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.