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Published on: March 1, 2019
Weather and children's time allocation
Ha Trong Nguyen1,2, Huong Thu Le1,3, Luke B Connelly4,5
1Telethon Kids Institute, Perth, Australia.
Insights
Unfavorable weather, like rain or extreme temperatures, significantly impacts children's daily routines. Children spend less time outdoors in active pursuits and more time indoors with media when weather is poor.
Area of Science:
- Environmental Health
- Child Development
- Time Use Studies
Background:
- Understanding how environmental factors influence child behavior is crucial for public health.
- Children's time allocation is a key determinant of their physical activity, social interaction, and cognitive development.
- Previous research has not causally linked weather variations to specific changes in children's time use.
Purpose of the Study:
- To provide the first causal estimates of weather's impact on children's time allocation.
- To investigate how different weather conditions (temperature, rain) affect children's activity choices.
- To examine variations in weather effects based on day type (weekends) and child characteristics (asthma).
Main Methods:
- Utilized longitudinal data from two nationally representative cohorts of Australian children over 10 years.
- Employed exogenous variations in local weather data linked to children's time-use diaries.
- Applied robust statistical methods, including individual fixed effects and alternative specifications, to ensure causal inference.
Main Results:
- Unfavorable weather (cold, hot, rain) causes children to shift from outdoor to indoor activities.
- Time spent on active pursuits and travel decreases, while media consumption increases.
- Weather effects are more pronounced on weekends and in children with asthma; adaptation to temperature is observed in colder regions.
Conclusions:
- Extreme weather conditions can negatively affect children's health and development by altering their time allocation.
- Findings highlight the importance of considering weather in interventions aimed at promoting children's well-being.
- The study underscores potential long-term consequences for children's achievements due to weather-induced behavioral changes.
Abstract:
This paper presents the first causal estimates of the effect of weather on children's time allocation. It exploits exogenous variations in local weather observed during the random diary dates of two nationally representative cohorts of Australian children whose time-use diaries were surveyed biennially over 10 years. Unfavorable weather conditions, as represented by cold or hot temperature or rain, cause children to switch activities from outdoors to indoors, mainly by reducing the time allocated to active pursuits and travel and increasing the time allocated to media. Furthermore, the effects of bad weather are more pronounced on weekends and for children with asthma. Our results also provide some evidence of adaptation, as temperature tends to have greater impact not only in winter months but also in colder regions. Our findings are robust to a wide range of sensitivity checks, including controlling for individual fixed effects and using alternative model specifications. Overall, the results suggest that extreme weather conditions may diminish children's health, development and long-term achievements through their effects on children's time allocation.
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