The Intergenerational Transfer of Eating Habits, Physical Activity Behaviour, and Body Composition: Evidence from the UK

Rising rates of overweight and obesity of both children and adults in the UK is of major concern. Current government policy has primarily focused on reducing childhood rates of overweight and obesity by ensuring healthy school meals and building physical activity into daily life. However, parent‘s eating habits, physical activity patterns, and body composition will influence their children‘s behaviour. Determining the role that parent‘s plays in impacting their children‘s behaviour will be important to create effective policy to promote the health of current and future generations. This research uses economic techniques to establish the relationship between parents and children‘s behaviour concerning the areas of eating habits, physical activity, and body composition. Differences by parental gender and the affect of single parent households will be examined. The availability of supermarkets and fast food chains on eating behaviour and weight of family members will also be addressed. Finally, the effectiveness of current government policy will be analysed. Results will increase the understanding of family interactions and behaviour regarding eating habits, physical activity, and body composition as well as determining the effectiveness of current policy to reduce childhood obesity.

The research undertaken during the fellowship will investigate inter-household relationships regarding eating habits, physical activity patterns, and body fat composition in the UK using secondary data, such as the National Child Development Survey (NCDS). Current government policy has focused on children‘s health through programmes to reduce overweight and obesity such as healthy school meals and building physical activity into the school day. However, parental behaviour which is affected by the built environment, education, and socioeconomic status may influence children‘s eating habits, physical activity behaviour, and body composition. Establishing parent‘s role in influencing their children‘s behaviour is important in evaluating the effectiveness of current policy and the creation of future policy to promote a healthy population.
A theoretical and econometric framework will be developed that accounts for education, income, number and age of children, health and other factors which will affect the transmission of parental behaviour to their children. Issues of correlations in the error term between parents and children as well as individual heterogeneity and endogeneity will be controlled for in the model. Three sets of equations will be estimated to determine outcomes relating to 1) eating habits; 2) physical activity participation; and 3) body composition. Differences by gender of the parent and child on the transmission of behaviour and the effect of single parent households on children‘s behaviour will also be examined.
Further extensions of this research will analyse effectiveness of current government policy by examining the responsiveness of family behaviour to programmes aim at reducing the rates of childhood obesity. Families living in areas which have implemented programmes such as healthy school meals and physical activity programs will be compared to families with similar characteristics in areas without these programmes using an appropriate econometric model such as two-way fixed effects. I will also explore supply side effects on family eating behaviour and body composition through the use of company and local authority data. It is expected that the concentration of fast food outlets and chain supermarkets in an area will influence family eating habits and subsequently their weight and health.
This research will enable me to develop work undertaken during my PhD, to widen my knowledge of health economics and to increase the understanding of the relationship between the family, their environment, eating habits, physical activity behaviour, and body composition to inform policy makers, health professionals and the general public.