Carrell, Scott E.
[Verfasser:in]
;
West, James E.
[Sonstige Person, Familie und Körperschaft];
Hoekstra, Mark
[Sonstige Person, Familie und Körperschaft]National Bureau of Economic Research
Is Poor Fitness Contagious? Evidence from Randomly Assigned Friends
Erschienen:
Cambridge, Mass: National Bureau of Economic Research, November 2010
Erschienen in:NBER working paper series ; no. w16518
Umfang:
1 Online-Ressource
Sprache:
Englisch
DOI:
10.3386/w16518
Identifikator:
Reproduktionsnotiz:
Hardcopy version available to institutional subscribers
Entstehung:
Anmerkungen:
Mode of access: World Wide Web
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Beschreibung:
The increase in obesity over the past thirty years has led researchers to investigate the role of social networks as a contributing factor. However, several challenges make it difficult to demonstrate a causal link between friends' physical fitness and own fitness using observational data. To overcome these problems, we exploit data from a unique setting in which individuals are randomly assigned to peer groups. We find statistically significant peer effects that are 40 to 70 percent as large as the own effect of prior fitness scores on current fitness outcomes. Evidence suggests that the effects are caused primarily by friends who were the least fit, thus supporting the provocative notion that poor physical fitness spreads on a person-to-person basis