TY - JOUR AU - Sandy, Robert AU - Liu, Gilbert AU - Ottensmann, John AU - Tchernis, Rusty AU - Wilson, Jeffrey AU - Ford, O.T. TI - Studying the Child Obesity Epidemic With Natural Experiments JF - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series VL - No. 14989 PY - 2009 Y2 - May 2009 DO - 10.3386/w14989 UR - http://www.nber.org/papers/w14989 L1 - http://www.nber.org/papers/w14989.pdf N1 - Author contact info: Robert Sandy Department of Economics 425 University Boulevard India Tel: 317/274-4756 Fax: 317/274-2347 E-Mail: icjz100@iupui.edu Gilbert C. Liu Children's Health Services Research HITS 1020 410 W. 10th St. India E-Mail: gcliu@IUPUI.edu John R. Ottensmann School of Public and Environmental Affairs 801 W. Michigan St. India E-Mail: jottensm@iupui.edu Rusty Tchernis Department of Economics Andrew Young School of Policy Studies Georgia State University P.O. Box 3992 Atlanta, GA 30302-3992 Tel: 404/413/0154 Fax: 404/413-0145 E-Mail: rtchernis@gsu.edu Jeffrey Wilson IUPUI Department of Geography 317 Cavanaugh Hall India E-Mail: jeswilso@iupui.edu O.T. Ford Department of Geography, Indiana University - Purdue University Indianapolis Cavanaugh Hall 209 425 University Boulevard India E-Mail: oford@iupui.edu M1 - published as Robert Sandy, Gilbert Liu, John Ottensmann, Rusty Tchernis, Jeff Wilson, O. T. Ford. "Studying the Child Obesity Epidemic with Natural Experiments," in Michael Grossman and Naci H. Mocan, editors, "Economic Aspects of Obesity" University of Chicago Press (2011) M3 - presented at "Economic Aspects of Obesity", November 10-11, 2008 AB - We utilize clinical records of successive visits by children to pediatric clinics in Indianapolis to estimate the effects on their body mass of environmental changes near their homes. We compare results for fixed-residence children with those for cross-sectional data. Our environmental factors are fast food restaurants, supermarkets, parks, trails, and violent crimes, and 13 types of recreational amenities derived from the interpretation of annual aerial photographs. We looked for responses to these factors changing within buffers of 0.1, 0.25, 0.5, and 1 mile. We found that cross-sectional estimates are quite different from the Fixed Effects estimates of the impacts of amenities locating near a child. In cross section nearby fast food restaurants were associated with higher BMI and supermarkets with lower BMI. These results were reversed in the FE estimates. The recreational amenities that appear to lower children's BMI were fitness areas, kickball diamonds, and volleyball courts. We estimated that locating these amenities near their homes could reduce the weight of an overweight eight-year old boy by 3 to 6 pounds. ER -