Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/35056 
Year of Publication: 
2008
Series/Report no.: 
IZA Discussion Papers No. 3610
Publisher: 
Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA), Bonn
Abstract: 
Despite the urgent public health implications, relatively little is yet known about the effect of peers on adolescent weight gain. We describe trends and features of adolescent BMI in a nationally representative dataset and document correlations in weight gain among peers. We find strong correlations between own body mass index (BMI) and peers' BMI's. Though the correlations are especially strong in the upper ends of the BMI distribution, the relationship is smooth and holds over almost the entire range of adolescent BMI. Furthermore, the results are robust to the inclusion of school fixed effects and basic controls for other confounding factors such as race, sex, and age. Some recent research in this area asks whether or not adolescent weight gain is caused by peers. We discuss the econometric difficulties in plausibly estimating such effects. Our results do not rule out the existence of these types of social network effects.
Subjects: 
Obesity
peer effects
adolescent health
JEL: 
I10
Persistent Identifier of the first edition: 
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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