IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/hai/wpaper/200727.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Identifying Endogenous Peer Effects in the Spread of Obesity

Author

Listed:
  • Timothy J. Halliday

    (Department of Economics, University of Hawaii at Manoa)

  • Sally Kwak

    (Department of Economics, University of Hawaii at Manoa)

Abstract

Recent research in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) purports to show the existence of peer effects in the spread of obesity. Using a dataset of 5124 residents from Framingham, Massachusetts spanning the years 1971 to 2003, the authors show correlations between own weight gain and friends’ and relatives’ weight gain over this period. They find, furthermore, that these results are strongest for males and weaker for females. We use the Adolescent Health Survey, a nationally representative dataset of seventh through twelfth graders in 1994 and 1996 to examine the effect of peers on weight gain. Despite the differences in the samples, we are able to replicate the pattern of results in the NEJM study. However the results are not robust to alternative definitions of the outcome variable. Furthermore, due to the various identification issues that are unresolved in both this and the NEJM paper, we conclude that the evidence for contagion effects in the spread of obesity is only suggestive at best.

Suggested Citation

  • Timothy J. Halliday & Sally Kwak, 2007. "Identifying Endogenous Peer Effects in the Spread of Obesity," Working Papers 200727, University of Hawaii at Manoa, Department of Economics.
  • Handle: RePEc:hai:wpaper:200727
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.economics.hawaii.edu/research/workingpapers/WP_07-27.pdf
    File Function: First version, 2007
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Deaton, Angus, 1995. "Data and econometric tools for development analysis," Handbook of Development Economics, in: Hollis Chenery & T.N. Srinivasan (ed.), Handbook of Development Economics, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 33, pages 1785-1882, Elsevier.
    2. Alejandro Gaviria & Steven Raphael, 2001. "School-Based Peer Effects And Juvenile Behavior," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 83(2), pages 257-268, May.
    3. Bo E. Honoré & Ekaterini Kyriazidou, 2000. "Panel Data Discrete Choice Models with Lagged Dependent Variables," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 68(4), pages 839-874, July.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Olga Yakusheva & Kandice A. Kapinos & Daniel Eisenberg, 2014. "Estimating Heterogeneous and Hierarchical Peer Effects on Body Weight Using Roommate Assignments as a Natural Experiment," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 49(1), pages 234-261.
    2. Loh, Chung-Ping A. & Li, Qiang, 2013. "Peer effects in adolescent bodyweight: Evidence from rural China," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 86(C), pages 35-44.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Bryan S. Graham, 2015. "Methods of Identification in Social Networks," Annual Review of Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 7(1), pages 465-485, August.
    2. Halliday, Timothy J. & Kwak, Sally, 2009. "Weight gain in adolescents and their peers," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 7(2), pages 181-190, July.
    3. Ana Balsa & Carlos Díaz, 2018. "Social interactions in health behaviors and conditions," Documentos de Trabajo/Working Papers 1802, Facultad de Ciencias Empresariales y Economia. Universidad de Montevideo..
    4. repec:lic:licosd:31612 is not listed on IDEAS
    5. Jaya Jumrani & P. S. Birthal, 2017. "Does consumption of tobacco and alcohol affect household food security? Evidence from rural India," Food Security: The Science, Sociology and Economics of Food Production and Access to Food, Springer;The International Society for Plant Pathology, vol. 9(2), pages 255-279, April.
    6. Sonia Oreffice & Climent Quintana-Domeque, 2012. "A Matter of Weight? The Role of Spouses. Physical Attractiveness on Hours of Work," CHILD Working Papers Series 7, Centre for Household, Income, Labour and Demographic Economics (CHILD) - CCA.
    7. Berthélemy Michel & Bonev Petyo & Dussaux Damien & Söderberg Magnus, 2019. "Methods for strengthening a weak instrument in the case of a persistent treatment," Studies in Nonlinear Dynamics & Econometrics, De Gruyter, vol. 23(1), pages 1-30, February.
    8. Joseph G. Altonji & Rosa L. Matzkin, 2001. "Panel Data Estimators for Nonseparable Models with Endogenous Regressors," NBER Technical Working Papers 0267, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    9. Brian Beach & Martin Saavedra, 2015. "Mitigating the Effects of Low Birth Weight: Evidence from Randomly Assigned Adoptees," American Journal of Health Economics, MIT Press, vol. 1(3), pages 275-296, Summer.
    10. Carla Sá & Raymond Florax & Piet Rietveld, 2007. "Living-arrangement and university decisions of Dutch young adults," NIPE Working Papers 14/2007, NIPE - Universidade do Minho.
    11. Hoderlein, Stefan & White, Halbert, 2012. "Nonparametric identification in nonseparable panel data models with generalized fixed effects," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 168(2), pages 300-314.
    12. Troske, Kenneth R. & Voicu, Alexandru, 2010. "Joint estimation of sequential labor force participation and fertility decisions using Markov chain Monte Carlo techniques," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 17(1), pages 150-169, January.
    13. Taisuke Otsu & Myung Hwan Seo, 2014. "Asymptotics for maximum score method under general conditions," STICERD - Econometrics Paper Series 571, Suntory and Toyota International Centres for Economics and Related Disciplines, LSE.
    14. Shiu, Ji-Liang & Hu, Yingyao, 2013. "Identification and estimation of nonlinear dynamic panel data models with unobserved covariates," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 175(2), pages 116-131.
    15. Bet Caeyers, 2014. "Peer effects in development programme awareness of vulnerable groups in rural Tanzania," CSAE Working Paper Series 2014-11, Centre for the Study of African Economies, University of Oxford.
    16. Ana-Maria Fuertes & Elena Kalotychou, 2004. "Forecasting sovereign default using panel models: A comparative analysis," Computing in Economics and Finance 2004 228, Society for Computational Economics.
    17. Yakusheva, Olga & Kapinos, Kandice & Weiss, Marianne, 2011. "Peer effects and the Freshman 15: Evidence from a natural experiment," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 9(2), pages 119-132, March.
    18. Lionel WILNER, 2019. "The Dynamics of Individual Happiness," Working Papers 2019-18, Center for Research in Economics and Statistics.
    19. Yoshitsugu Kitazawa, 2010. "A hyperbolic transformation for a fixed effects logit model," Discussion Papers 43, Kyushu Sangyo University, Faculty of Economics.
    20. Barbieri, Paolo Nicola & Nguyen, Hieu M., 2021. "When in America, do as the Americans? The evolution of health behaviors and outcomes across immigrant cohorts," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 43(C).
    21. Sanchez-Bueno, Maria J. & Usero, Belen, 2014. "How may the nature of family firms explain the decisions concerning international diversification?," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 67(7), pages 1311-1320.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Peer effects; obesity; adolescent health;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • I10 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - General
    • I12 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Health Behavior
    • J01 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - General - - - Labor Economics: General

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:hai:wpaper:200727. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: Web Technician (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/deuhius.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.