Consumer/Household Economics, Health Economics and Policy,

Capogrossi, Kristen

You, Wen

English

Research Papers in Economics

Academic Performance and Childhood Misnourishment:  A Quantile 
Approach
Kristen Capogrossi
Department of Agricultural and Applied Economics, Virginia Tech
Wen   You
Department of Agricultural and Applied Economics, Virginia Tech
Poster prepared for presentation at the Agricultural & Applied Economics Association’s 2011 
AAEA & NAREA Joint Annual Meeting, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, July 24-26, 2011
Copyright 2011 by Kristen Capogrossi and Wen You. All rights reserved. Readers may make verbatim copies of 
this document for non-commercial purposes by any means, provided this copyright notice appears on all such 
copies.65%
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RESEARCH QUESTIONS
 Does weight status impact academic performance?
 Are impacts of weight larger on lower performing 
students?
 Do inequalities in academic performance between 
misnourished students and healthy weight students 
increase over time?
Academic Performance and Childhood Misnourishment:  A Quantile Approach
INTRODUCTION
 Childhood misnourishment:
¾ Caused by insufficient dietary and nutritional 
quality
¾ Includes overweight, obese and underweight
 United States estimates:
¾ 190+ million overweight children
¾ 2.4 million underweight children
 Childhood misnourishment brings serious health 
consequences:
¾ Chronic diseases
¾ Weaken immune system → more frequent and 
worse infections 
 Does weight affect cognitive development?
¾ Mixed results are found on correlations between   
misnourishment and academic performance
ANALYSIS APPROACH
Endogeneity
 Simultaneity between health and cognitive production functions
 Example: if poor parenting contributes to child weight and poor
academic performance rather than weight causing poor performance
 Need instruments that influence performance only through weight:
¾ Child’s past weight;
¾ Health insurance status;
¾ Number of breakfasts and dinners eaten as a family
¾ Parental occupation variables (e.g., current employment status)
Instrumental Variable Quantile Regression (IVQR)
 Quantile regression: 
¾ get an overall picture of covariate effects 
¾ allow examination of the tails of the distribution
 IVQR (Chernozhukov and Hansen, 2005) 
¾ allows and corrects for multiple continuous or dichotomous 
endogenous variables
¾ measures of child weight (endogenous variable):
 BMI percentile-for-age 
 BMI z-score
 dichotomous weight classification
Kristen Capogrossi and Wen You
Department of Agricultural and Applied Economics
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Reading IRT Score Percentile
8th Grade White Males
RESULTS
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5th Grade White Males
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DATA
 Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Kindergarten 
Class
 Nationally representative sample of 21,260 children 
followed from kindergarten (1998-1999) to 8th grade
 Information on children, parents, teachers and 
schools
 Standardized math and reading scores which can be 
compared among children and over time
 Staff measured weight and height of the students
72%
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12%
13%
Obese
Overweight
Healthy Weight
Underweight
1st   Grade Sample 8th   Grade Sample
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Quantile
5th Grade Hispanic Females
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Math IRT Score Percentile
SUMMARY OF FINDINGS
 Overall Findings:
¾Weight has significant negative impacts on  
performance depending on race and gender with  
underweight having the smallest impact 
¾Heterogeneous relationship between 
obesity/underweight and academic performance 
varies across distribution
¾Weight tends to affect math scores more than 
reading scores
 Detailed Findings:
¾ Being obese has an increasingly negative impact 
on math scores of Hispanic males and reading 
scores of white males from 1st to 8th grade in the 
lower-middle score percentiles
¾ For Hispanic females, weight status had the 
most significant impact on math scores in upper 
percentiles (75th to 95th) and had varying impacts for 
obese, overweight and underweight students
¾ For black males and females, being underweight 
has a large negative impact on reading scores (15th-
25th) in 8th grade 
¾ For white females, being obese or overweight 
had negative significant impacts on math scores in 
lower-middle percentiles (15th-65th) in 1st and 5th
grades
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8th Grade Hispanic Females
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POLICY IMPLICATIONS
 Policies targeting childhood weight could have  
positive spillover effects on academic performance, 
particularly of lower performing students
 Policies should advocate healthy weight and an 
active lifestyle as to include underweight children
¾ Local Wellness Policies from WIC 
Reauthorization Act
¾ Better balanced school meals
 National School Lunch Program (NSLP)
 School Breakfast Program (SBP)
 Policies targeting children’s health and performance 
should begin early
¾ Students 
eating meals 
through NSLP

Academic Performance and Childhood Misnourishment: A Quantile Approach

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