Expanding Wallets and Waistlines: The Impact of Family Income on the BMI of Women and Men Eligible for the Earned Income Tax Credit

Does the earned income tax credit increase children's weight? The impact of policy‐driven income on childhood obesity

“…This finding is consistent with existing studies that show how the EITC expansion improved maternal (Averett & Wang, 2013;Evans & Garthwaite, 2014) and infant health (Hoynes, Miller, & Simon, 2015). Furthermore, the paper's finding on income effects is consistent with other recent studies, where additional income led to weight gain of Native American adolescents (Akee, Simeonova, Copeland, Angold, & Costello, 2013) and adult women (Schmeiser, 2009). This paper contributes to the literature in three ways.…”

“…Second, it contributes to the growing literature investigating the causal effect of income. A large number of studies examine the association between family income and body weight (Anderson & Butcher, 2006;Jo, 2014;Kumanyika & Grier, 2006;Strauss & Pollack, (2001), but only few examine causality (Akee et al 2013;Schmeiser, 2009). Identifying the causal effect of income on obesity is empirically challenging because changes in income and body weight may be driven, for example, by an unobserved third factor.…”

Do Minimum Wage Increases Influence Worker Health?

“…But this effect would likely take a long time to materialize, as the depreciation rate is a slow-moving parameter that is determined by a wide set of factors, many of which, like the health endowment, are exogenous to health behaviors. findings (Apouey and Clark 2015;Au and Johnston 2014;Ettner 1996;Evans, Wolfe, and Adler 2012;Frijters, Haisken-DeNew, and Shields 2005;Kim and Ruhm 2012;Meer, Miller, and Rosen 2003;Schmeiser 2009). For example, in recent work Apouey and Clark (2015) show that exogenous gains in income have no impact on self-reported general health, but such income gains do improve self-reported mental health.…”

An economy of scales: A selective review of obesity's economic causes, consequences, and solutions

“…Neither the Social Security payments examined by Cawley et al (2010) nor the casino payments examined by Akee et al (2013) were means tested, but the affected groups were relatively lower-income; Social Security beneficiaries tend to have lower earned income (though greater wealth) than working-age adults and Native Americans have a lower median income and higher poverty rate than the nation as a whole (U.S. Census Bureau, 2011). The EITC recipients examined by Schmeiser (2009) are unambiguously a low-income group.…”