In contrast to the popular policy claim that sport might serve as vehicle to meet the Millennium Development Goals, empirical evidence based on large-scale survey data is largely missing. We use panel data based on a cohort of children and employ propensity score matching to identify the effects of sports participation on child development in Peru. Our findings suggest that participation in a sports group has positive impacts on subjective health and a measure of social capital. However, and in contrast to developed countries, we find no statistically significant effects on well-being and human capital formation.
JEL classification:C14, D12, I21, J24, Z29
Keywords:Social capital, Human capital, Well-being, Health, Sports Participation, Development 2 Can sport really help to meet the Millennium Development Goals?Evidence from children in Peru "We at the United Nations know that sport is a universal language, uniting groups and nations across divides. Sport empowers youth, promotes good health and deepens UN values such as equality, mutual respect and fair play. Sport helps us in spreading messages of peace, driving social change and meeting the Millennium Development Goals (…)" (Ban Ki-moon, 2014a).
I. IntroductionPolicy makers have traditionally embraced the role of sport in providing health and social benefits for both, adults and children -becoming manifest for instance in the European Sports Charter. Consequently, global organizations, such as the United Nations Children's Fund (Unicef), put much effort into fostering the implementation of Article 31 of the UN Convention on the right to play for children and adolescents. This has been emphasized in less developed countries (LDCs) since sport is seen as a low-cost but high-impact tool for child and youth development (Ban Ki-moon, 2014b).In contrast to the belief in the beneficial effects of sports participation for children and adolescents in such policy initiatives, evidence based on the analysis of large-scale survey data is limited. The literature that exists, moreover, explores the outcomes of sports participation in developed countries (see Section II) where passive leisure activities such as watching TV are popular substitutes for physical activity, and employment as well as 3 education possibilities to enhance human and social capital are widespread. This is different in LDCs where access to education is more limited (Caballero, 2005) and the conditions required to enhance social capital are worse (Bornstein et al., 2012). A final point of note is that the research that analyses the factors associated with child development in LDCs have not tested for causal relationships between sport and development. A recent example is Helmers & Patnam (2011). This paper contributes to the literature by formally testing for the presence of a causal relationship between sports participation and child development in Peru. Peru is interesting because it is still developing and involved in programs to increase children's sports participation. This is most notably...