Overweight Korean Adolescents and Academic Achievement

The relationship between academic achievement and being overweight among South Korean high school students was examined. Data used in the regression were from the Korean Education and Employment Panel Survey. The theoretical framework that poor school performance increases the risk of adolescents’ being overweight, which, in turn, causes poor school performance, was supported. With no other direct or indirect association between weight and achievement, an overweight high school student’s poor performance in school was assumed to be a function of the psychosocial well-being variables and self-concern about weight. A simultaneous-equation regression model that endogenized the likelihood an individual is classified as overweight (a binary variable) and the performance of that individual on the College Scholastic Ability Test (CSAT) incorporates the unobserved psychosocial well-being correlated with both school grades and being overweight.

Seung Gyu KimEmail:

---

Seong-Hoon Cho   has been employed as Assistant Professor in the Department of Agricultural Economics at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville since July 2004. Dr. Cho received his Ph.D. in Resource and Environmental Economics from Oregon State University. He has developed research in the area of natural resource and environmental management focusing on the application of spatial econometrics to the issues of urban-rural fringe and policy options. Dayton M. Lambert   is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Agricultural Economics, the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Dr. Lambert’s research focuses on the development of models to understand the dynamics of spatial economies, trends in demographic migration, industry clustering, and business location decisions as they pertain to rural economic development. He teaches an undergraduate class in rural economic development. Hyun Jae Kim   is a Senior Researcher in Korea Energy Economics Institute. He received his Ph.D. in Economics from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. Seung Gyu Kim   is a Ph.D. student in Natural Resources with concentration in Natural Resource Economics at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. His areas of interest lie in the area of natural resource and environmental economics, land economics, and spatial econometrics.