The health care costs of childhood obesity in Australia: an instrumental variables approach

Nicole Black; Robert  Hughes; Andrew Michael Jones

doi:10.1016/j.ehb.2018.07.003

The health care costs of childhood obesity in Australia: an instrumental variables approach

Nicole Black, Robert Hughes, Andrew Michael Jones

Economics

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

Abstract

The effect of childhood obesity on medical costs incurred by the Australian Government is estimated using five waves of panel data from the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children, which is linked to public health insurance administrative records from Medicare Australia. Instrumental variables estimators are used to address concerns about measurement error and selection bias. The additional annual medical costs due to overweight and obesity among 6 to 13 year olds is about $43 million (in 2015 AUD). This is driven by a higher utilisation of general practitioner and specialist doctors. The results suggest that the economic consequences of childhood obesity are much larger than previously estimated.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	1-13
Number of pages	13
Journal	Economics and Human Biology
Volume	31
Early online date	23 Jul 2018
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ehb.2018.07.003
Publication status	Published - Sept 2018

Bibliographical note

Keywords

BMI
Child
Instrumental variable
Medical costs
Obesity
Overweight
Ren

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10.1016/j.ehb.2018.07.003

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© 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. This is an author-produced version of the published paper. Uploaded in accordance with the publisher’s self-archiving policy.
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The health care costs of childhood obesity in Australia: an instrumental variables approach

Abstract

Bibliographical note

Keywords

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