Children’s weight and participation in organized sports

Abstract

Aims: Literature dealing with the impact of organized sports on children’s weight has been marked by a lack of consensus. A major weakness characterizing most of this research is a lack of proper measurement methods. This paper seeks to fill an important knowledge gap through careful application of econometric methods. Methods: Estimations are carried out using data on 1,400 children attending 6th grade in 2008 in the municipality of Aalborg, Denmark. We use standard ordinary least squares (OLS) and class fixed effects to explore the effect of sports participation on body mass index (BMI) as well as underweight, overweight and obesity. Results: Results indicate that participation in organized sports reduced BMI by 2.1%. Likewise it reduced the likelihood of being overweight by 8.2 percentage points and obese by 3.1 percentage points. Conclusions: It is the unique dataset combined with econometric methods that distinguishes our contribution from that of others in the field, thereby offering new insight. Results using statistically sound methods suggest that participation in organized sports has a beneficial effect on children’s weight.