Causes and Consequences of Excess Body Weight

Session Submission Type: Panel

Abstract

Excess body weight represents one of the most significant and costly public health challenges facing the United States, yet important questions remain about both its determinants and its downstream consequences. This session brings together four papers that advance our understanding of these issues by drawing on a range of natural experiments, novel data sources, and credible identification strategies to shed new light on the causes and consequences of excess body weight in the United States. Two papers examine the causes of excess body weight. The first paper provides new evidence on the role of federal funding in reducing obesity prevalence, exploiting plausibly exogenous variation in program expenditures to identify the causal effect of public investment on population health. The second paper investigates whether e-cigarette taxes have unintended consequences for body weight by reducing access to a known appetite suppressant. Together, these papers highlight how public policy can have both intended and unintended effects on the prevalence of obesity, and underscore the importance of accounting for spillover effects when evaluating the full costs and benefits of public health interventions.

The remaining two papers explore the consequences of body weight and physical activity. The third paper asks whether greater athletic opportunities for women under Title IX generate lasting intergenerational health benefits, highlighting the potential for policies that expand physical activity among young women to have long-run consequences for population health. The final paper examines whether excess body weight impedes academic achievement, asking whether the consequences of obesity extend beyond physical health to shape educational attainment and long-run economic opportunity. These latter two papers demonstrate the far-reaching consequences of weight-related behaviors and outcomes.

Together, all four of these papers speak to the wide-ranging social and economic forces that shape weight-related behaviors and body weight, as well as the broad costs that excess weight imposes on individuals and society.

Policy Area

• Health Policy

Chair

• John Cawley, Syracuse University

Discussants

• Agustina Laurito, University of Illinois, Chicago

• Koroles Awad, American University

Organizer

• Brandyn F Churchill, American University

Individual Presentations

• New Evidence on the Role of Federal Funding in Reducing the Prevalence of Obesity - Presenting Author: Brandyn F Churchill, American University

• Do Vaping Taxes Tip the Scale? The Effect of E-Cigarette Taxation on Obesity - Presenting Author: Joseph J. Sabia, San Diego State University

• Sporting Opportunities and Intergenerational Health Transmission: Measuring the Effect of Title IX on Generational Health Outcomes - Presenting Author: Rodrigo Aranda, Western Michigan University

• How Body Weight Shapes Academic Success - Presenting Author: Amy Ellen Schwartz, University of Delaware