Seminar: Childhood obesity, family lifestyle and child health: a dynamic latent factor model

Speaker: Laura Gray

Speaker bio: Laura is an econometrician working in Health Economics and Decision Science (HEDS) in the School of Health and Related Research (ScHARR) at the University of Sheffield. She recently completed her PhD, which investigated the early life causes of childhood obesity. She is interested in microeconometric methods development and applied microeconometrics, particularly in relation to obesity and health behaviours.

Abstract: Recent policies implemented by the UK government, such as Change4Life, aim to improve the health of children and adults by improving family lifestyle. A key aim of these policies is to reduce childhood obesity and improve child health. Using data from the Millennium Cohort Study, we investigate the dynamic relationship between underlying family lifestyle and childhood obesity during early childhood. Family lifestyle is hard to define and proxies are often used. We develop a more comprehensive measure of family lifestyle by estimating a latent factor at different stages of childhood without measurement error. We use a dynamic latent factor model, an approach that allows us to identify family lifestyle, its evolution over time and its influence on childhood obesity and other observable outcomes. We find that family lifestyle is persistent and has a significant influence on childhood weight status as well as other outcomes for all family members. Next, we extend this model to include child health. This allows us to estimate the dynamic effects of family lifestyle on child weight through its influence on general child health. We find that the main driver of childhood obesity is still family lifestyle and that there is an additional influence of family lifestyle on childhood obesity through improvements to child health. Interventions targeting the underlying family lifestyle should be prolonged and persuasive and implemented as early as possible during childhood in order to have the greatest cumulative influence. However, we find that interventions at any stage in childhood could lead to reductions in obesity. Furthermore, the results indicate that to reduce inequalities in childhood obesity, policy makers should target disadvantaged families and design interventions with these families in mind.