Alumni Bulletin - Winter 2009 - (Page 10)

business & economics • civil & environmental engineering RESEARCH business & economics STUDY LINKS FAST-FOOD ADS TO CHILDHOOD OBESITY A ban on fast-food advertisements in the United States could reduce the number of overweight children by as much as 18 percent, according to a study co-authored by Shin-Yi Chou, the Frank L. Magee Distinguished Professor at Lehigh’s College of Business and Economics. evision advertising as a possible cause,” Chou says. “Hopefully, this line of research can lead to a serious discussion about the type of policies that can curb America’s obesity epidemic.” Eliminating the tax deductibility tied to advertising would produce similar declines in childhood obesity, albeit at a lower rate of 5–7 percent, the study found. Advertising is considered a business expense, and as such, it can be subtracted from a company’s taxable income. The authors deduce that, since the corporate income tax rate is 35 percent, the elimination of the tax deductibility of food advertising costs would be equivalent to increasing the price of advertising by 54 percent. Such an action would reduce fast-food advertising messages by 40 percent for children and 33 percent for adolescents. The study—the largest of its kind to directly tie childhood obesity to fast-food advertising on American television—is based on “Hopefully, this line of research can lead to a the viewing habits of serious discussion about the type of policies nearly 13,000 children and used data from the that can curb America’s obesity epidemic.” 1979 Child-Young Adult National Longitudinal Survey of Youth and the 1997 National adolescents ages 12–18 by 14 percent. The efLongitudinal Survey of Youth, both issued by fect is more pronounced in males than females. the U.S. Department of Labor. Though a ban would be effective, the authors question whether such a high degree of A 2006 report issued by the Institute of government involvement, and the costs of imMedicine indicated there is compelling eviplementing such policies, would make it a dence linking food advertising on television practical option. and increased childhood obesity. “We have known for some time that child“Some members of the committee that wrote hood obesity has gripped our culture, but little the report recommended congressional regulaempirical research has been done to identify teltion of television food advertisements aimed at The study, which was published in the November Journal of Law and Economics, reports that eliminating the tax deductibility associated with television advertising would also reduce childhood obesity, though in smaller numbers. The study was conducted for the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) by Chou and her fellow economists at the NBER, Inas Rashad of Georgia State University and Michael Grossman of City University of New York Graduate Center. Funded by the National Institutes of Health, the study measured the number of hours children spent watching fast-food television advertisements each week. Chou and her colleagues found that a ban on fast-food television advertisements during children’s programming would reduce the number of overweight children ages 3–11 by 18 percent and lower the number of overweight 10 lehigh alumni bulletin Shin-Yi Chou pinpoints factors that contribute to the obesity epidemic through economic analyses. children, but the report also said that the ﬁnal link that would deﬁnitively prove that children had become fatter by watching food commercials aimed at them cannot be made,” Grossman says. “Our study provides evidence of that link.” Within one generation, childhood obesity has become a major health epidemic in the United States. The Centers for Disease Control estimate that, between 1970 and 1999, the percentage of overweight children ages 6–11 more than tripled to 13 percent. Obesity in adolescents between the ages of 12 and 19 also significantly increased, reaching 14 percent. Childhood obesity is deﬁned as one having a Body Mass Index (BMI) at or above the 95th percentile based on age- and gender-specific growth charts. Research indicates that there is an 80 percent chance an overweight adolescent will be an obese adult and attributes to obesity more than 300,000 deaths in the United States every year.—Tom Yencho PHOTO BY DOUGLAS BENEDICT

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Alumni Bulletin - Winter 2009

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