TY  - JOUR
AU  - Anderson,Patricia M.
AU  - Butcher,Kristin F.
TI  - Reading, Writing and Raisinets: Are School Finances Contributing to Children's Obesity?
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 11177
PY  - 2005
Y2  - March 2005
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w11177
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w11177.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Patricia M. Anderson
Department of Economics
Dartmouth College
6106 Rockefeller
Hanover, NH  03755-3514
Tel: 603/646-2532
Fax: 603/646-2122
E-Mail: patricia.m.anderson@dartmouth.edu

Kristin Butcher
Department of Economics
Wellesley College
106 Central Street
Wellesley, MA 02481
Tel: 781/283-2179
Fax: 781/283-2177
E-Mail: kbutcher@wellesley.edu
AB  - The proportion of adolescents in the United States who are obese has nearly tripled over the last two decades. At the same time, schools, often citing financial pressures, have given students greater access to "junk" foods, using proceeds from the sales to fund school programs. We examine whether schools under financial pressure are more likely to adopt potentially unhealthful food policies. We find that a 10 percentage point increase in the probability of access to junk food leads to about a one percent increase in students' body mass index (BMI). However, this average effect is entirely driven by adolescents who have an overweight parent, for whom the effect of such food policies is much larger (2.2%). This suggests that those adolescents who have a genetic or family susceptibility to obesity are most affected by the school food environment. A rough calculation suggests that the increase in availability of junk foods in schools can account for about one-fifth of the increase in average BMI among adolescents over the last decade.
ER  -