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National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences

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Your Environment. Your Health.

Publication Detail

Title: Obesity and health-related decisions: An empirical model of the determinants of weight status across the transition from adolescence to young adulthood.

Authors: Morales, Leonardo Fabio; Gordon-Larsen, Penny; Guilkey, David

Published In Econ Hum Biol, (2016 Dec)

Abstract: We estimate a structural dynamic model of the determinants of obesity. In addition to including many of the well-recognized endogenous factors mentioned in the literature as obesity determinants, we also model the individual's residential location as a choice variable, which is the main contribution of this paper to the literature. This allows us to control for an individual's self-selection into communities that possess the types of amenities in the built environment, which in turn affect their obesity-related behaviors such as physical activity (PA) and fast food consumption. We specify reduced form equations for a set of endogenous demand decisions, together with an obesity structural equation. The whole system of equations is jointly estimated by a semi-parametric full information log-likelihood method that allows for a general pattern of correlation in the errors across equations. Our model predicts a reduction in adult obesity of 7 percentage points as a result of a continued high level PA from adolescence into adulthood; a reduction of 0.7 (3) percentage points in adult obesity as a result of one standard deviation reduction in weekly fast food consumption for women (men); and a reduction of 0.02 (0.05) in adult obesity as a result of one standard deviation change in several neighborhood amenities for women (men). Another key finding is that controlling for residential self-selection has substantive implications. To our knowledge, this has not been yet documented within a full information maximum likelihood framework.

PubMed ID: 27459276 Exiting the NIEHS site

MeSH Terms: Adolescent; Adult; Body Mass Index; Body Weight*; Choice Behavior*; Exercise*; Fast Foods; Female; Humans; Likelihood Functions; Male; Obesity/epidemiology*; Prospective Studies; Residence Characteristics/statistics & numerical data*; Sex Factors; Young Adult

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