National day holiday and Weight Gain in China: evidence from the CHNS surveys

ABSTRACT

We use the regression discontinuity model and CHNS (China Health and Nutrition Survey) data, to study the body weight-gain effect of the week-long National Day holiday in China. We find that Chinese adults tend to significantly gain 1.56 kg of body weight during the National Day holiday, and males have a larger effect. However, the effect will be smaller and insignificant in 2 weeks. It verifies the Chinese saying: People gain 1.5 kg body weight for a good holiday (mei feng jia jie pang san jin), only in the short-run.

KEYWORDS:

• Holiday Weight Gain
• national Day Holiday
• regression Discontinuity
• obesity

Disclosure statement

No

Ethical statement

No.

Notes

¹ Only two people reported their health condition in the first half-year.

² For the 7–7 time window, the average weight gain of the whole subsample is: 0.593*(MRS^2) = 1.561 kg,where MRS is the root mean square of height in corresponding subsample, and 0.593 is the estimated coefficient of treatment variable treat reported in Table 2; similarly, for the other time windows, we can estimate the weight gain by multiplying estimated coefficient with the corresponding MRS. We can also calculate body weight gain per capita the for males and females based on the same rationale.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft [RTG1666].