The increased prevalence of childhood obesity is a major concern for society. This study aims at exploring the influence of the parents (especially parental time allocation choices) on children’s obesity-related health outcomes and examining the potential differences between the fathers’ and the mothers’ marginal effects. A household with two parents and one child is modeled. The household production theory and the collective household modeling structure are combined. The model treats the mother, the father and the child as three separate agents with individual preferences. The two parents’ interaction is modeled within the collective model framework by assuming that they will reach Pareto efficient resource allocation between them. In order to capture the dynamics between parents and the child, parents-child interaction is modeled in a two-stage Stackleberg game structure where the child is allowed to have certain decision choices of his/her own. This game structure allows us to explore the parental influence on the child’s health outcomes while allowing the child to have influencing power in the household decision-making process. Based on this theoretical model, a general triangular system with one child’s health production equation and five health inputs demand equations is derived and estimated. The empirical estimation is performed for three systems: pooled model, the younger children model (of age 9 to 11), and the older children model (of age 13 to 15). The empirical results show mother-related variables show more influence on the child’s Body Mass Index (BMI) outcomes compared to father-related variables: mothers’ BMI and mothers’ work-to-home stress spillover are positively related to their children’s BMI while mothers’ time spent with their children is negatively related to their children’s BMI. There exists a complementary relationship between mothers’ income and fathers’ food preparation time. In the older children model, mothers’ own income increases tend to decrease their time spent with their children. The main contribution of this study is that it develops a general theoretical framework to capture the dynamics in parents-child interaction. Based on this theoretical model, empirical analysis and future work can be conducted in a theoretically consistent way.

The dissertation investigates how individual behaviors and health outcomes interplay with surrounding built environments, in three essays. We conceptually focus on travel behaviors and accessibility. In the first essay, we hypothesize that urban sprawl increases requisite travel time which limits leisure time available as inputs to health production. We utilize the American Time Use Survey to quantify decreases in health-related activity participation due to commuting time. We identify significant evidence of trade-offs between commuting time and exercise, food preparation, and sleep behaviors, which exceed labor time trade-offs on a per-minute basis. Longer commutes are additionally associated with an increased likelihood of non-grocery food purchases and substitution into less strenuous exercise activities. We also utilize daily metropolitan traffic accidents as instruments which exogenously lengthen a particular day’s commute. The second essay tests whether the likelihood of food insecurity and “paradoxical” joint insecurity-obesity occurrences vary over the degree of urban sprawl. We utilize data from the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System’s Social Context Module merged with urban sprawl measures developed by Smart Growth America. We find significantly negative associations between urban sprawl and the likelihood of food insecurity, and that insecurity is more likely in areas of less developed street connectivity. We find that joint outcomes are more likely in less sprawled areas and that likelihood is greater in areas of greater street connectivity, which fails to support theories proposing that healthy food inaccessibility is a determinant of joint outcomes. The third essay evaluates research claims that walking and cycling to school increases students’ physical activity levels in a predominantly urban sample. We utilize the third wave of the Survey of Adults and Youth–a geocoded dataset–to identify determinants of walking or cycling to school, and in turn to explore to what extent active travel impacts adolescents' weekly exercise levels. Consistent with the literature, we find that the distance between home and school is the largest influence on the travel mode decision. We also find no evidence that active travel increases the number of students’ weekly exercise sessions. These results suggest that previous findings may not extend to all environments or populations.

We use data drawn from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 Cohort to study the effects of leaving school in an economic downturn on sleep quality and quantity. We account for the potential endogeneity of economic conditions at school leaving using instrumental variables based on birth year and early state of residence. We find that men who leave school in an economic downturn initially experience lower quality sleep, but these men are able to experience improved sleep quality over time. Women who leave school in an economic downturn experience better sleep quality, although the effect emerges over time. We find that leaving school in an economic downturn increases sleep quantity among men and women. We document heterogeneity by work type.

This paper examined the nexus between health care expenditure and economic growth in Sub-Saharan Africa. It is widely acknowledged that health is a type of human capital and a critical factor in the process of economic growth. Health production, in turn, is a major determinant of health outcomes. While the former relationship has been extensively researched in developed countries, very few studies have attempted to investigate this relationship in developing countries, particularly Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). Furthermore, very few studies have been conducted in SSA to investigate the relationship between health determinants, health outcomes, and economic growth. This study takes on the challenge of investigating this three-way relationship for SSA countries. Different variables like population, saving and foreign direct investment were found to be statistically significant determinants of economic growth using the Arellano-Bond Dynamic GMM technique for 26 SSA countries, while food availability were found to be significant determinants of life expectancy. On the other hand, none of the health indicators are significant determinants of economic growth in the region, implying that health outcomes must be improved in order to have a significant impact on growth. The findings should prompt immediate policy changes to harmful indicators in order to better stimulate health-led economic growth in SSA.

Yes / Non-communicable diseases (NCDs) are currently the leading cause of death worldwide. In this paper, we examine the channels through which economic growth affects NCDs’ epidemiology. Following a production function approach, we develop a basic technique to break up the impact of economic growth on NCDs into three fundamental components: (1) a resource effect; (2) a behaviour effect; and (3) a knowledge effect. We demonstrate that each of these effects can be measured as the product of two elasticities, the output and income elasticity of the three leading factors influencing the frequency of NCDs in any population: health care, healthrelated behaviours and lifestyle, and medical knowledge.

O território desta pesquisa se tece a partir de experiências acompanhadas como terapeuta ocupacional em dispositivos transversais que tocam a experiência artística com destaque para a arte contemporânea, fotografia e audiovisual e se instauram na vizinhança de práticas de saúde e/ou envolvem a presença de pessoas em situações de vulnerabilidades. Descrições e relatos dessas experiências se entrecruzam com conceitos filosóficos e referências artísticas, compondo ensaios que discutem problemáticas relativas às estratégias de participação social e cultural de pessoas que, por múltiplas questões, vivem situações de vulnerabilidades. Essa discussão contribuiu para delinear analisadores de situações de sofrimento e exclusão nos processos de subjetivação contemporâneos para além dessas populações específicas, configurando um campo problemático definido pela biopolítica enquanto regime de poder hegemônico que compõe os domínios da terapia ocupacional e da cultura, e por processos de relação com a imagem onde a prevalência da discursividade prescreve vivências blindando a possibilidade de se viver experiências. A partir da cartografia mapeou-se linhas transversais vividas de forma singular em cada experiência: a presença da câmera fotográfica e/ou audiovisual e a circulação nos diferentes espaços da cidade e da vida coletiva. As referências artísticas se constituíram por projetos cuja produção de imagens fotográficas e/ou audiovisuais envolve processos colaborativos e, as referências conceituais se constituíram no campo da filosofia, da estética e da cultura envolvendo diferentes autores, com destaque para Foucault, Bergson, Benjamin, Deleuze, Guattari, Pèlbart, Rancière, Groys, Galard e Hall. As práticas artísticas, engendradas numa determinada perspectiva, destacam-se enquanto alternativas para instaurar experimentações que possibilitam a produção de subjetividade a partir da heterogênese. Assim, esta pesquisa contribui ao conjunto de estudos interdisciplinares na interface das artes, da cultura e da produção de saúde. / The territory of this research is determined by accompanied experiences of an occupational therapist in transversal devices that compose artistic experiences especially contemporary arts, photography and video and involve health practices and/or the presence of people in vulnerable situations. Descriptions and reports of these experiences are mutually crossed with philosophical concepts and artistic references, producing essays to discuss and appoint problems related to strategies of social and cultural participation of people who, by multiple issues, live in vulnerable situations. This discussion contributed to outline indicators of suffering and exclusion in contemporary subjectification processes beyond these specific populations. Facing a problematic field defined by biopolitics as an hegemonic power regime that compose the occupational therapy and culture domains, and the processes of dealing with images, the discursivity prevalence dictates experiences plating the possibility of experimentation. The cartography method was used to survey transversal lines revealed in a particular way in each experience: the presence of a camera and the circulation in different urban and collective spaces. The artistic references were built by projects that produce images and videos by collaborative processes; the conceptual references were produced in the philosophy, esthetics and culture fields and involved several authors, specially Foucault, Bergson, Benjamin, Deleuze, Guattari, Pèlbart, Rancière, Groys, Galard e Hall. The artistic practices, generated in a certain perspective, appear as alternatives to establish experimentations that allow the subjectivity production from heterogenesis. Therefore, this research is a contribution to interdisciplinary studies on arts, culture and health production interface.

O território desta pesquisa se tece a partir de experiências acompanhadas como terapeuta ocupacional em dispositivos transversais que tocam a experiência artística com destaque para a arte contemporânea, fotografia e audiovisual e se instauram na vizinhança de práticas de saúde e/ou envolvem a presença de pessoas em situações de vulnerabilidades. Descrições e relatos dessas experiências se entrecruzam com conceitos filosóficos e referências artísticas, compondo ensaios que discutem problemáticas relativas às estratégias de participação social e cultural de pessoas que, por múltiplas questões, vivem situações de vulnerabilidades. Essa discussão contribuiu para delinear analisadores de situações de sofrimento e exclusão nos processos de subjetivação contemporâneos para além dessas populações específicas, configurando um campo problemático definido pela biopolítica enquanto regime de poder hegemônico que compõe os domínios da terapia ocupacional e da cultura, e por processos de relação com a imagem onde a prevalência da discursividade prescreve vivências blindando a possibilidade de se viver experiências. A partir da cartografia mapeou-se linhas transversais vividas de forma singular em cada experiência: a presença da câmera fotográfica e/ou audiovisual e a circulação nos diferentes espaços da cidade e da vida coletiva. As referências artísticas se constituíram por projetos cuja produção de imagens fotográficas e/ou audiovisuais envolve processos colaborativos e, as referências conceituais se constituíram no campo da filosofia, da estética e da cultura envolvendo diferentes autores, com destaque para Foucault, Bergson, Benjamin, Deleuze, Guattari, Pèlbart, Rancière, Groys, Galard e Hall. As práticas artísticas, engendradas numa determinada perspectiva, destacam-se enquanto alternativas para instaurar experimentações que possibilitam a produção de subjetividade a partir da heterogênese. Assim, esta pesquisa contribui ao conjunto de estudos interdisciplinares na interface das artes, da cultura e da produção de saúde. / The territory of this research is determined by accompanied experiences of an occupational therapist in transversal devices that compose artistic experiences especially contemporary arts, photography and video and involve health practices and/or the presence of people in vulnerable situations. Descriptions and reports of these experiences are mutually crossed with philosophical concepts and artistic references, producing essays to discuss and appoint problems related to strategies of social and cultural participation of people who, by multiple issues, live in vulnerable situations. This discussion contributed to outline indicators of suffering and exclusion in contemporary subjectification processes beyond these specific populations. Facing a problematic field defined by biopolitics as an hegemonic power regime that compose the occupational therapy and culture domains, and the processes of dealing with images, the discursivity prevalence dictates experiences plating the possibility of experimentation. The cartography method was used to survey transversal lines revealed in a particular way in each experience: the presence of a camera and the circulation in different urban and collective spaces. The artistic references were built by projects that produce images and videos by collaborative processes; the conceptual references were produced in the philosophy, esthetics and culture fields and involved several authors, specially Foucault, Bergson, Benjamin, Deleuze, Guattari, Pèlbart, Rancière, Groys, Galard e Hall. The artistic practices, generated in a certain perspective, appear as alternatives to establish experimentations that allow the subjectivity production from heterogenesis. Therefore, this research is a contribution to interdisciplinary studies on arts, culture and health production interface.

This study deals with the health production function. It analyzes the impact of health care, socioeconomic, lifestyle and environmental factors on the mortality and life expectancy of the population of the Czech Republic. The analysis is made by linear regressions with time series data for the period from 1993 to 2011. Health care is measured by health care expenditures or by non-monetary indicators, the number of doctors and the consumption of pharmaceuticals. The results show that higher health care expenditures increase the mortality and reduce life expectancy. On the other hand higher number of doctors and higher consumption of pharmaceuticals improve the health status of the population. It may indicate inefficiency and corruption in health sector. Important factors that positively influence health are wealth, education and fruit and vegetable consumption, smoking affects health negatively. The results suggest that health care policy should focus not only on effective allocation of health care expenditures but also on lifestyle and socioeconomic status of the population. The limits of this work are short time series which don't allow the use of the lagged explanatory variables.