The obesity loss effect of returns to education: Evidence from China

Abstract

Abstract As the world’s largest developing country, China’s overweight and obesity rate is higher than the global average and is growing. This paper investigates the effect of education on obesity and its mechanism to study the “weight loss” effect of education. The study finds that education has a nonremarkable effect on being overweight but a remarkable negative effect on obesity. Mechanism analysis showed that education can inhibit the occurrence of obesity by improving nutritional knowledge, enhancing health risk perception, improving diet regularity and increasing physical exercise. Heterogeneity analysis showed that the effect of education on obesity is more significant in rural residents and female samples compared with their counterparts. Further analysis revealed that education inhibits obesity mainly through improving nutritional knowledge for urban residents and female samples and by enhancing physical exercise for rural residents and male samples.