@techreport{ba448cc1beb44318bfd30bb9ae878483,
title = "Television, Children's Obesity Risk and Mental Well-being: Lessons from the UK Digital Switchover",
abstract = "We examine the effect of screen-based activities on obesity and mental well-being for children, exploiting exogenous variation in the entry date of the digital television transition in the UK. The digital transition increased the number of available free television channels from 5 to 40, leading to an increase in television viewing time. Our results show that one additional year with access to digital television signal increases BMI z-scores by 0.159 standard deviations and the mental health total difficulties score by 2.13% among children. Underlying the net effects appears to be a decrease in physical activity among children, while neither eating habits nor personal views about self-appearance seem to play a signicant role.",
keywords = "Television, BMI, Obesity, Mental Health, Well-being",
author = "{Nieto Castro}, Adrian and Marc Suhrcke",
year = "2020",
month = dec,
day = "11",
language = "English",
series = "Working papers",
publisher = "LISER",
number = "2020-12",
address = "Luxembourg",
type = "WorkingPaper",
institution = "LISER",
}