Abstract
We assess how children’s and adolescents’ nutritional status affects school attendance in Brazil. Using microdata from the 2002/2003 and 2008/2009 Brazilian Household Budget Surveys (POF), we construct a two-period synthetic panel linked by birth date, sex, race/color, and state. We estimate individual fixed-effects linear models to isolate the impact of body weight from time-invariant confounding. Outcomes indicate sizeable attendance penalties associated with higher BMI and obesity: each additional BMI unit lowers attendance probability by 1.09 percentage points, and obesity corresponds to a 5.3 percentage point reduction relative to non-obese peers. Overweight and normal weight, although negative, are not statistically significant, while underweight is associated with a 10-percentage point increase in school attendance. Boys attend less than girls; living with both parents, head’s schooling, and household income raise attendance. In panel logit, BMI odds ratios of 0.866 (fixed effects) and 0.902 (random effects) corroborate the negative association. Findings suggest that education policies should be complemented by nutrition and health actions, such as improved school meals, physical activity promotion, anti-bullying and psychosocial support, to mitigate obesity’s adverse effects on schooling and human capital formation.
Presenters
Ana Lucia KassoufResearcher, Economics, University of Sao Paulo and Partnership for Economic Policy, São Paulo, Brazil
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
KEYWORDS
CHILDHOOD OBESITY, BMI, SCHOOL ATTENDANCE, BRAZIL
