TY - BOOK AU - Cawley,John AU - Liu,Feng ED - National Bureau of Economic Research. TI - Maternal Employment and Childhood Obesity: A Search for Mechanisms in Time Use Data T2 - NBER working paper series PY - 2007/// CY - Cambridge, Mass. PB - National Bureau of Economic Research N1 - November 2007; Hardcopy version available to institutional subscribers N2 - Recent research has found that maternal employment is associated with an increased risk of childhood obesity. This paper explores mechanisms for that correlation. We estimate models of instrumental variables using a unique dataset, the American Time Use Survey, that measure the effect of maternal employment on the mother's allocation of time to activities related to child diet and physical activity. We find that employed women spend significantly less time cooking, eating with their children, and playing with their children, and are more likely to purchase prepared foods. We find suggestive evidence that these decreases in time are only partly offset by husbands and partners. These findings offer plausible mechanisms for the association of maternal employment with childhood obesity UR - https://www.nber.org/papers/w13600 UR - http://dx.doi.org/10.3386/w13600 ER -