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Unconditional cash transfers and parental obesity

Laetitia Lebihan1, Charles-Olivier Mao Takongmo1

  • 1University of Ottawa, 120 University, Social Sciences Building, Room 9005, Ottawa, Ontario, K1N 6N5, Canada.

Social Science & Medicine (1982)
|February 18, 2019
PubMed

Insights

Unconditional family cash transfers, like Canada's Universal Child Care Benefit, reduced parental body mass index (BMI) and obesity, especially for mothers. Fathers' weight outcomes remained unaffected by this policy.

Area of Science:

  • Public Health
  • Economics
  • Sociology

Background:

  • Parental obesity is a significant public health concern.
  • Understanding the socioeconomic determinants of parental weight is crucial for effective interventions.
  • Previous research has explored the link between income and health, but the impact of specific cash transfer policies requires further investigation.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To assess the effect of unconditional family cash transfers on parental body mass index (BMI) and obesity.
  • To examine differential impacts across demographic groups, including education level and marital status.
  • To determine if the policy influenced maternal and paternal weight outcomes differently.

Main Methods:

  • Utilized the implementation of Canada's Universal Child Care Benefit (UCCB) in 2006 as a natural experiment.
  • Analyzed changes in parental BMI and obesity prevalence before and after the policy introduction.
  • Employed econometric methods to isolate the policy's causal effect on weight outcomes.

Main Results:

  • The Universal Child Care Benefit led to significant decreases in BMI and obesity prevalence among mothers with young children.
  • Larger reductions in BMI were observed at the upper tail of the distribution for lower-educated and single mothers.
  • No statistically significant impact of the cash transfer policy on fathers' weight outcomes was found.

Conclusions:

  • Unconditional cash transfer programs can be an effective tool for improving maternal health outcomes, specifically reducing obesity.
  • Targeted support may yield greater benefits for vulnerable maternal subgroups.
  • Policy interventions focused on families can have distinct effects on different parental genders.

Keywords:
Body mass indexObesityUniversal child benefits

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