Türkiye’de Sağlık Davranışlarını ve Obeziteyi Belirleyici Faktörler

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to examine the determinants of health behaviors and obesity with an emphasis on education in Turkey. We use Health Survey of Turkish Statistical Institute for the years 2008, 2010 and 2012. The health behaviors considered are smoking, alcohol consumption, fruit and vegetable consumption, and exercise. We consider both the years of schooling and the different levels of education in order to better understand the association between education and health. We find that education is the most important factor associated with the health behaviors and obesity. Smoking is positively associated with education at all levels with a decreasing effect with the level of education unlike in the developed countries. Alcohol consumption is positively related with education and this association increases with the level of education. Higher educated individuals clearly eat more fruits, vegetables and exercise more and they are less likely to be obese compared to the less educated and the illiterate. We also highlight the importance of demographic factors, labor market status and household income in determining health behaviors and obesity.

The Effect of Education on Health Behaviors and Obesity in Turkey: Instrumental Variable Estimates from a Developing Country

“…A previous study by Tansel and Karaoğlan (2019) who used the same dataset as this study reports on the association between education and health behaviors and BMI with simple probit and OLS estimations. Average marginal effects calculated from probit estimations for the years of schooling variable are reported in Table 3.…”

“…For obesity, probit results show that higher level of education is related to a lower probability of being obese. Tansel and Karaoğlan (2019) also reports on the association between different levels of education and health behaviors and BMI (not shown). For instance, the probability of smoking decreases as the level of education increases.…”

“…Nevertheless, the effect is insignificant. 20 Differently from Tansel and Karaoğlan (2019), we test the impact of education on the probability of being obese, rather than individuals' BMI levesl. Therefore, we replicate Tansel and Karaoğlan's (2019) estimation by implementing the probit techniques.…”

“…We should also note that the health behaviors we analyze could be the mechanisms that explain the relationship between education and obesity. Tansel and Karaoğlan (2019) show that individuals with higher levels of education are more informed about the benefits of both regular exercise and fruit and vegetable consumption. Later, Karaoğlan and Tansel (2018) argue that individuals with higher education levels have healthier life styles, and, therefore, they tend to have normal ranges of BMI.…”

“…The literature on the determinants of health behaviors in Turkey is limited and most of the studies do not take the endogeneity problem into account. Tansel and Karaoğlan (2019) estimate the association between health behaviors and education for Turkey by using the same dataset as this study. However, the possible endogeneity of education is not considered.…”