title: High School Physical Education Requirements and Youth Body Weight: New Evidence from the YRBS.
abstract: Previous research has found that high school physical education (PE) requirements are largely ineffective at reducing youth body weight. However, these studies were forced to rely on cross-state variation in PE requirements to identify their impacts, raising concerns that estimated policy effects may be confounded by state-level unobservables. Using data from the State and National Youth Risk Behavior Surveys and exploiting recent changes in state high school PE laws, we re-examine the effect of PE requirements on body weight. Our estimates show that a one-semester increase in PE requirements is associated with a 10 to 13% increase in minutes per week spent physically active in PE classes, but with no change in net vigorous exercise and little change in youth body weight. We conclude that substitution of in-school for outside-of-school physical activity and small resultant net energy expenditures can explain the absence of body weight effects. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
authors: Forrest D. McKerley Professor of Health Economics, Department of Economics and Department of Health Policy and Management, University of New Hampshire, Durham, NH, USA.|IZA, Bonn, Germany.
authors: Joseph J
authors: JJ
authors: Sabia
authors: Department of Economics, University of New Hampshire, Durham, NH, USA.
authors: Thanh Tam
authors: TT
authors: Nguyen
authors: Department of Economics, San Diego State University, San Diego, CA, USA.
authors: Oren
authors: O
authors: Rosenberg
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000367:Age Factors; D015992:Body Mass Index; D001835:Body Weight; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D015233:Models, Statistical; D009765:Obesity / Q000453:epidemiology; D010806:Physical Education and Training / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D012737:Sex Factors; D012959:Socioeconomic Factors; D013997:Time Factors
keywords: exercise; overweight; physical education requirements; youth body weight