Maternal Employment and Its Relationship to Childhood Obesity in Russia (Based on RLMS Data)

The object of this study is to identify possible channels of the influence of maternal employment on childhood obesity in Russia. I use matched mother-child data from the Russia Longitudinal Monitoring Survey of HSE (RLMS-HSE). The data contain about 14,000 pairs of mother-child data who were surveyed from 2000 to 2019. I use econometric models with random effect and fixed effect to control for endogeneity. The main cause of endogeneity is omitted unobservable variables that may influence both childhood obesity and their mother’s work patterns. The results show that there is an adverse effect of maternal employment on childhood obesity. However, maternal employment reduces the likelihood of childhood obesity for low-income families. For these families, there is a non-linear relationship between maternal employment and childhood obesity. My results indicate that the adverse effect of maternal employment on childhood obesity is caused by unhealthy eating habits and a sedentary lifestyle of children. The main mediators between maternal employment and childhood obesity are irregular meals during the day and hours of watching TV, playing video games and playing computer games. The probability of child’s obesity increases if the child eats irregularly during the day. Time spent watching TV during the day also has a strong positive statistically significant effect on the likelihood of childhood obesity. These results are consistent with the results obtained in other studies.