PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Wei Huang
AU  - Elaine M. Liu
AU  - C. Andrew Zuppann
TI  - Relative Obesity and the Formation of Non-cognitive Abilities During Adolescence<sup>*</sup>
AID  - 10.3368/jhr.58.2.1018-9812R2
DP  - 2020 Nov 10
TA  - Journal of Human Resources
PG  - 1018-9812R2
4099  - http://jhr.uwpress.org/content/early/2020/11/04/jhr.58.2.1018-9812R2.short
4100  - http://jhr.uwpress.org/content/early/2020/11/04/jhr.58.2.1018-9812R2.full
AB  - We study the role of relative childhood and adolescent obesity in the development of non- cognitive abilities. We employ a novel identification strategy, utilizing the fact that one’s body size is a relative concept and there are large variations in body sizes across MSAs. We focus on children who move between MSAs. Controlling for origin-destination state pair fixed effects, we find that a 10 percentile point increase in relative body size would increase behavioral problems by 2 percentile points. This effect is of a similar magnitude to a two-year reduction in maternal education.