TY - JOUR
T1 - Do fast food restaurants surrounding schools affect childhood obesity?
AU - Asirvatham, Jebaraj
AU - Thomsen, Michael R.
AU - Nayga, Rodolfo M.
AU - Goudie, Anthony
N1 - Funding Information:
This research was funded by the Agriculture and Food Research Initiative of the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture , grant number 2011-68001-30014 . This work was also partly supported by the National Research Foundation of Korea ( NRF-2014S1A3A2044459 ); Research Council of Norway Grant #233800 ; the Arkansas Biosciences Institute (ABI) ; and the National Institute of General Medical Sciences of the National Institutes of Health under Award Number P20GM109096 . The research reported in this study was approved by the Institutional Review Board, University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, USA under protocols # 10-11-235 and # 14-07-026. The procedures of this study are in accordance with ethical standards for human research.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2019 Elsevier B.V.
PY - 2019/5
Y1 - 2019/5
N2 - In this study, we estimate the effect of fast food environment surrounding schools on childhood body mass index (BMI). We use two methods that arrive at a similar conclusion, but with different implications. Using school distance from the nearest federal highway to instrument for restaurant location, we find the surrounding restaurants to only marginally affect a student's BMI measure. The effect size also decreases with increasing radial distances from school, 0.016 standard deviations at one-third of a mile and 0.0032 standard deviations at a mile radial distance. This indicates the decreasing influence of restaurants on a child's BMI as its distance from school increases. On a subset of students who were exogenously assigned to different school food environment, we find no effect of the fast food restaurants. An important contextual aspect is that nearly all schools in this sample observed closed campus policy, which does not allow students to leave campus during lunch hours.
AB - In this study, we estimate the effect of fast food environment surrounding schools on childhood body mass index (BMI). We use two methods that arrive at a similar conclusion, but with different implications. Using school distance from the nearest federal highway to instrument for restaurant location, we find the surrounding restaurants to only marginally affect a student's BMI measure. The effect size also decreases with increasing radial distances from school, 0.016 standard deviations at one-third of a mile and 0.0032 standard deviations at a mile radial distance. This indicates the decreasing influence of restaurants on a child's BMI as its distance from school increases. On a subset of students who were exogenously assigned to different school food environment, we find no effect of the fast food restaurants. An important contextual aspect is that nearly all schools in this sample observed closed campus policy, which does not allow students to leave campus during lunch hours.
KW - Body mass index
KW - Childhood obesity
KW - Fast food
KW - Instrumental variable estimation
KW - School food environment
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85062152865&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.ehb.2019.01.011
DO - 10.1016/j.ehb.2019.01.011
M3 - Article
C2 - 30825861
AN - SCOPUS:85062152865
SN - 1570-677X
VL - 33
SP - 124
EP - 133
JO - Economics and Human Biology
JF - Economics and Human Biology
ER -