In response to the dramatic rise in childhood obesity, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and other organizations … of obesity among 5th graders. This effect is concentrated among boys; we find evidence that this gender difference is …. This represents some of the first evidence of a causal effect of PE on youth obesity, and thus offers at least some support …

This paper is the first to use the method of instrumental variables (IV) to estimate the impact of obesity on medical … genetic variation in weight as a natural experiment, yields estimates of the impact of obesity on medical costs that are … considerably higher than the estimates reported in the previous literature. For example, obesity is associated with $656 higher …