Presenter:

Haiyong Liu

Authors:

Haiyong Liu

Chair: Albert Okunade; Discussant: TBA Tue June 6, 2006 8:00-9:30 Room 309

Rationale: The effect of Food Stamp Program (FSP) participation on mitigating food insecurity and childhood obesity is likely to be confounded with maternal employment decisions. For instance, supplemental food subsidies may free up mothers’ time spent in home production, namely food preparation, and enable them to work away from home. It is important to account for the potential income effect and substitution effect when assessing the effects of the FSP on weight health outcomes because both income and maternal time are crucial inputs for child health.

Objectives: The objective of this study is to evaluate the impacts of poverty, FSP, and maternal employment on the risk of obesity in early childhood.

Methodology: This study investigates the interactions between poverty, FSP participation, and maternal employment, as well as their impacts on the risk of obesity among children who are raised in single mother families. The main data source in this study is from the matched mother/child data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY79). Utilizing the full information maximum likelihood (FIML) method, the empirical model estimates the joint decisions of FSP enrollment and maternal employment along with child health (weight) production function simultaneously to account for the potential endogeneity of these health inputs. The identification strategy used in this paper exploits the time series interactions of all current and lagged exogenous variables and a set of instruments that capture the variations of welfare regulations across states and over time.

Results: The results suggest that FSP participation mitigates the risk of childhood obesity among the poor while maternal employment is positively linked to incidents of obesity over the whole socio-economic spectrum. Both findings are statistically significant. In addition, the racial gap of the weight health problem is widening over years, even after accounting for family income and maternal employment. Finally, estimation methods without adequate control for endogeneity of FSP participation and maternal employment are likely to yield biased results.

Conclusions: The childhood health disparities among different socio-economic stratums are widening, especially for racial minorities. The food assistance programs modestly mitigate the risk of obesity among impoverished children while the risk could be aggravated because of mother’s excessive time spent in the labor market. These findings imply that when single mothers transitioning from welfare to the labor market, policy considerations should be given to their family, especially on relaxed eligibility rules for food assistance.