@article{You:9737,
      recid = {9737},
      author = {You, Wen and Davis, George C.},
      title = {Household Food Expenditures, Parental Time Allocation, and  Childhood Obesity},
      address = {2007},
      number = {381-2016-22085},
      series = {Selected Paper 174323},
      pages = {39},
      year = {2007},
      abstract = {The increased prevalence of childhood obesity is a major  concern for society. This study aims at exploring the  influence of the parents (especially parental time  allocation choices) on children's obesity-related health  outcomes and examining the potential differences between  the fathers' and the mothers' marginal effects.   A  household with two parents and one child is modeled. The  household production theory and the collective household  modeling structure are combined. The model treats the  mother, the father and the child as three separate agents  with individual preferences. The two parents' interaction  is modeled within the collective model framework by  assuming that they will reach Pareto efficient resource  allocation between them. In order to capture the dynamics  between parents and the child, parents-child interaction is  modeled in a two-stage Stackleberg game structure where the  child is allowed to have certain decision choices of  his/her own. This game structure allows us to explore the  parental influence on the child's health outcomes while  allowing the child to have influencing power in the  household decision-making process.  Based on this  theoretical model, a general triangular system with one  child's health production equation and five health inputs  demand equations is derived and estimated. The empirical  estimation is performed for three systems: pooled model,  the younger children model (of age 9 to 11), and the older  children model (of age 13 to 15).   The empirical results  shows positive relationship between total household monthly  food expenditure and the child's BMI outcome. Both parents'  time spent with the child are important and both show  negatively significant impact on the child's BMI outcomes  in all models and the pool model confirms the statistical  difference between paternal and maternal time spent with  the child. Other mother-related variables show more  influence on the children's BMI. There exists a  complementary relationship between mothers' income and  fathers' time allocation. Fathers have more significant  influence on household food expenditure compared to  mothers. In general, mothers' show more significant  influence on the parental time allocation compared to  fathers.   The main contribution of this study is that it  develops a general theoretical framework to capture the  dynamics in parents-child interaction. Based on this  theoretical model, empirical analysis and future work can  be conducted in a theoretically consistent way.},
      url = {http://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/9737},
      doi = {https://doi.org/10.22004/ag.econ.9737},
}