TY  - RPRT
        AU  - Biroli, Pietro
AU  - Boneva, Teodora
AU  - Raja, Akash
AU  - Rauh, Christopher
        TI  - Parental Beliefs about Returns to Child Health Investments
        PY  - 2018/Feb/
        PB  - Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)
        CY  - Bonn
        T2  - IZA Discussion Paper
        IS  - 11336
        UR  - https://www.iza.org/index.php/publications/dp11336
        AB  - Childhood obesity has adverse health and productivity consequences and poses negative externalities to health services. Its increase in recent decades can be traced back to unhealthy habits acquired in the household. We investigate whether parental beliefs play a role by eliciting beliefs about the returns to a recommended-calorie diet and regular exercise using hypothetical investment scenarios. We show that perceived returns are predictive of health investments and outcomes, and that less educated parents perceive the returns to health investments to be lower, thus contributing to the socioeconomic inequality in health outcomes and the intergenerational transmission of obesity.
        KW  - equality of opportunity
KW  - parental investments
KW  - health
KW  - beliefs
KW  - inequality
KW  - obesity
        ER  -