Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

Though the tremendous effort in reducing or reversing childhood obesity, it is still reported that one in five school-aged children are obese (i.e., Body Mass Index ≥ 95^th percentile). The adverse effect of obesity on the immediate and long-term children’s wellbeing, as well as societal burden, has been widely explored. At the same time, intrigued by that weight gain is attributed from the energy imbalance, numerous studies introduced a variety of programs to induce physical activity and healthy dietary habit among adolescents and investigated the effectiveness of the programs.

Concerning that the problem of obesity will not be the outcome of personal choice any more, governments have also introduced numerous new programs and policies to enhance healthy lifestyle among adolescents, in schools and community. Legislatures have also supported such programs through introduction of new legislation. For example, the Child Nutrition and Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) Reauthorization Act of 2004 was enacted to encourage state and local authorities to promote healthy lifestyle and the Healthy, Hunger Free Act of 2010 was enacted to limit the sales of foods with minimal nutritional value during school lunch period. These laws coincided with a plethora of state legislations and regulations aimed at increasing physical activity in schools through setting a certain amount of physical education credit requirements for graduation and at increasing access to healthy foods through requirements that school meals meet the current Dietary Guidelines for Americans and place limits on fat, sugar, and total calories of all food sold on school premises.

A fundamental, but not fully answered, question is whether legislative regulation, especially at the state level, achieves the desired policy goal. Specifically, does the introduction of a state’s regulation tackling obesity bring about behavioral changes in terms of physical activity and healthy eating among adolescents?

To address the questions above, this study combined data from the following sources: (1) the State Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System (YRBSS) data (provided by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention) containing information about high school adolescents’ height, weight, and other attitudinal-behavioral variables indicating levels of physical activity and nutritional behavior; (2) state’s legislation and regulation information regarding physical activity requirement, nutrition standard and school nutrition policy, and safe route to school, through the Chronic Disease State Policy Tracking System in CDC. To analyze, this study adopts Difference-in-Difference method. The preliminary results show that in some states (such as RI and WV), the physical activity participation was increased, while in most states, it was not. Further analysis on what makes such difference would be included.