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Title: Essays on Women's Employment and Children's Well-Being
Resulting in 1 citation.
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Zhou, Xilin |
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Essays on Women's Employment and Children's Well-Being Ph.D. Dissertation, Department of Economics, Georgia State University, August 2015 Cohort(s): Children of the NLSY79, NLSY79 Publisher: Department of Economics, Georgia State University Keyword(s): Body Mass Index (BMI); Child Care Arrangements; Child Health; Geocoded Data; Maternal Employment; Modeling, Fixed Effects; Modeling, Instrumental Variables; Obesity; Work History Permission to reprint the abstract has not been received from the publisher. In chapter I, I investigate the causal effects of maternal employment on childhood obesity. Empirical analysis of the effects of maternal employment on childhood obesity is complicated by the endogeneity of mother's labor supply. A mother’s decision to work likely reflects underlying factors – such as ability and motivation – that could directly influence child health outcomes. To address this concern, this study implements an instrumental variables (IV) strategy which utilizes exogenous variation in maternal employment coming from the youngest sibling's school eligibility. With data on children ages 7-17 from the 1979 cohort of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth linked to the Child Supplement, I explore the effects of maternal employment on children's BMI z-score and probabilities of being overweight and obese. OLS estimates indicate a moderate association, consistent with the prior literature. However, the IV estimates show that an increase in mothers' labor supply leads to large weight gains among children, suggesting that not addressing the endogeneity of maternal employment leads to underestimated causal effects. |
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Bibliography Citation
Zhou, Xilin. Essays on Women's Employment and Children's Well-Being. Ph.D. Dissertation, Department of Economics, Georgia State University, August 2015. |