The primary objective of this paper is to improve our understanding of the historic relationship between state and national macroeconomic climate and the health insurance coverage of Americans. The secondary objective of this paper is to use the historic findings to estimate how the number of...

In response to the dramatic rise in childhood obesity, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and other organizations have advocated increasing the time that elementary school children spend in physical education (PE) classes. However, little is known about the effect of PE on child weight. This...

In response to the dramatic rise in childhood obesity, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and other organizations have advocated increasing the amount of time that elementary school children spend in physical education (PE) classes. However, little is known about the effect of PE on child...

This paper is the first to use the method of instrumental variables (IV) to estimate the impact of obesity on medical costs in order to address the endogeneity of weight and to reduce the bias from reporting error in weight. Models are estimated using restricted-use data from the Medical...

To combat childhood overweight in the US, which has risen dramatically in the past three decades, many medical and public health organizations have called for students to spend more time in physical education (PE) classes. This paper is the first to examine the impact of state PE requirements on...

"Childhood overweight has risen dramatically in the United States during the past three decades. The search for policy solutions is limited by a lack of evidence regarding the effectiveness of state policies for increasing physical activity among youths. This paper estimates the correlation of...