RT Journal Article
T1 The impact of obesity on human capital accumulation : exploring the driving factors
A1 Carrasco Perea, Raquel
A1 González González, Diego
AB This paper examines the impact of childhood obesity on Spanish high school students’ academic achievement and human capital accumulation. To address potential endogeneity concerns, we exploit exogenous variation in obesity within peer groups, using data from friendship networks. Specifically, we instrument individual obesity with the average body mass index of intransitive friendship triads. Our results indicate that obesity has a negative effect on academic outcomes, particularly on overall grades for girls and on cognitive abilities for both boys and girls. We also find a negative impact of obesity on girls’ mathematics scores, whereas boys experience a positive effect. We identify several key drivers underlying these relationships, including class fixed-effects, which potentially reflect teacher bias, psychological well-being, and expectations related to labor market discrimination.
PB Elsevier
SN 1570-677X
YR 2025
FD 2025
LK https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14352/132896
UL https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14352/132896
LA eng
NO Carrasco, R., & González-González, D. (2025). The impact of obesity on human capital accumulation: Exploring the driving factors. Economics & Human Biology, 59, 101520. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ehb.2025.101520
NO 2025 Acuerdos transformativos CRUE
NO Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación (España)
NO Comunidad de Madrid
NO European Commission
DS Docta Complutense
RD 11 abr 2026