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Abstract:
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In this paper, we study the effect a mother's marital status might have on the weight of her children. We use the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979.Early exploratory data analysis shows that there are 6,283 women in the study; we have complete marital status records on only 3,215 of them for the years 1979 through 2002.There are 3,068 women who have marital status records missing at some point of time. We first explore the data to investigate the nature of this missingness. Next, we build models to use the longitudinal data available, to explain the relationship between mother's marital status and obesity in children. It is possible that missingness in the mother's marital status is related to an unstable relationship and a stressful home environment, resulting in an improper diet for the child. We also investigate other variables such as child's self-esteem, to see how weight is affected.
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