This paper seeks to determine whether a causal relationship exists between maternal employment and childhood overweight. We use matched mother/child data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth and employ econometric techniques to control for observable and unobservable differences across...

The proportion of adolescents in the United States who are obese has nearly tripled over the last two decades. At the same time, schools, often citing financial pressures, have given students greater access to “junk” foods and soda pop, using proceeds from these sales to fund school...