The effect of fat mass on educational attainment: Examining the sensitivity to different identification strategies |
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| Authors: | Stephanie von Hinke Kessler Scholder George Davey Smith Debbie A Lawlor Carol Propper Frank Windmeijer |
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| Institution: | 1. Department of Economics and Related Studies, University of York, York YO10 5DD, United Kingdom;2. CMPO, University of Bristol, 2 Priory Road, Bristol BS8 1TX, United Kingdom;3. MRC Centre for Causal Analysis in Translational Epidemiology (CAiTE), School of Social and Community Medicine, University of Bristol, Oakfield House, Oakfield Grove, Bristol BS8 2BN, United Kingdom;4. Imperial College Business School, Imperial College London, South Kensington Campus, London SW7 2AZ, United Kingdom;5. Department of Economics, University of Bristol, 8 Woodland Road, Bristol BS8 1TN, United Kingdom;6. Centre for Microdata, Methods and Practice, Institute for Fiscal Studies, 7 Ridgmount Street, London WC1E 7AE, United Kingdom |
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| Abstract: | The literature that examines the relationship between child or adolescent Body Mass Index (BMI) and academic attainment generally finds mixed results. This may be due to the use of different data sets, conditioning variables, or methodologies: studies either use an individual fixed effects (FE) approach and/or an instrumental variable (IV) specification. Using one common dataset, the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children, and a common set of controls, this paper compares the different approaches (including using different types of IV's), discusses their appropriateness, and contrasts their findings. We show that, although the results differ depending on the approach, most estimates cannot be statistically distinguished from OLS, nor from each other. Examining the potential violations of key assumptions of the different approaches and comparing their point estimates, we conclude that fat mass is unlikely to be causally related to academic achievement in adolescence. |
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