The Long-Run Effects of Sports Club Vouchers for Primary School Children

Principal Investigator(s): View help for Principal Investigator(s) Thomas Siedler, Universität Potsdam; Jan Marcus, Universität Hamburg; Nicolas Ziebarth, Cornell University

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Project Citation:

Siedler, Thomas, Marcus, Jan, and Ziebarth, Nicolas. The Long-Run Effects of Sports Club Vouchers for Primary School Children. Nashville, TN: American Economic Association [publisher], 2022. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2022-07-26. https://doi.org/10.3886/E138922V1

Project Description

Summary:

Childhood obesity is one of the most serious public health challenges of the 21st century. While small-scale experiments change behaviors among adults in the short-run, we know little about the effectiveness of large-scale policies or the longer-run impacts due to habit formation among children. To nudge primary school children into a long-term habit of exercising, the German state of Saxony distributed sports club membership vouchers among all 33,000 third graders in 2009. In 2018, we carried out a register-based survey to evaluate the policy. Even after a decade, awareness of the voucher program was significantly higher in the treatment group. We also find that youth received and redeemed the vouchers. However, we do not find significant short- or long-term effects on sports club membership, physical activity, overweightness, or motor skills. Apparently, membership vouchers for children are not a strong enough policy tool to overcome barriers to exercise regularly.

Scope of Project

Subject Terms: register-based; online survey

JEL Classification:
      I12 Health Behavior
      I14 Health and Inequality
      I18 Health: Government Policy; Regulation; Public Health
      Z28 Sports Economics: Policy

Geographic Coverage: Germany (Saxony, Thuringia, Brandenburg))

Time Period(s): 1/1/2006 – 7/31/2018

Collection Date(s): 3/1/2018 – 7/31/2018 (Online Survey)

Universe: Individuals living in the federal states Saxony, Brandenburg, or Thuringia and who are born between July 1997 and June 2002.

Data Type(s): administrative records data; survey data

Methodology

Response Rate:

We chose the three federal states Saxony, Brandenburg, and Thuringia because they all use the same registry software which facilitated the execution of the survey and allowed us to provide the registries with instructions on how to randomly draw the subsamples. The neighboring state of Saxony-Anhalt uses a different software and is therefore not included. 94 of the 121 registry offices contacted responded. The response rate of the registry offices was similar in Saxony (77.5 percent) and the
control states (77.8 percent) and did not differ between urban and rural regions.

The response rate of the YOLO participants was 12.7 percent.

A detailed description of the methodology can be found in the online Appendix of the study "The Long-Run Effects of Sports Club Vouchers for Primary School Children". See, for example, Figure A3: YOLO Sampling and Sample Size.

Sampling:

In a first stage, we randomly sampled 121 registry offices in Saxony and the neighboring states of Brandenburg and Thuringia (with sampling probabilities proportional to population size).

In the second stage, we contacted all 94 registry offices who responded in the first stage, and requested an 80 percent random sample of the target population. This target population consists of individuals born between July 1997 and June 2002. The first cohort that received the C2SC voucher was born between July 1999 and June 2000. These individuals typically entered school in 2006 and the third grade in the school year 2008/2009. We aimed to survey two pre-voucher cohorts (born July 1997 to June 1999) and three treated voucher cohorts (born July 1999 to June 2002) in Saxony. Moreover, we surveyed the same five cohorts in the neighboring states of Brandenburg and Thuringia.

Next, we mailed one official invitation letter to each of the 155,527 adolescents sampled in the second stage. Figure A4 (Appendix) shows the original invitation letter for an online survey about youth leisure time activities. To increase response rates, we offered a lottery ticket for participation.10 This letter provided a unique access code for the online survey for both, children and their parents.11 This unique access code also allowed us to match children with their parents. Respondents completed the surveys between March and July, 2018. It took respondents an average of 34 minutes to complete the survey (see Figure A5 in the online Appendix). The final YOLO response rate was 12.7 percent. Below, we investigate and discuss selective survey
participation.

Data Source: Own register-based online survey. Collected by the authors. Name of the survey: Youth Leisure Online Survey (YOLO).

Collection Mode(s): web-based survey

Scales:

The first three outcome variables are dichotomous variables.

program known, voucher received, voucher redeemed.

Outcomes measures 4-6 are:

member of sports club, weekly hours of sport, overweight.

The variables member of sports club and overweigt are also dummy variables and the variable "weekly hours of sport" measures the average hours of sport per week.

A detailed description of the methodology can be found in the online Appendix of the study "The Long-Run Effects of Sports Club Vouchers for Primary

School Children". See, for example, Figure A3: YOLO Sampling and Sample Size.

Unit(s) of Observation: Individuals

Geographic Unit: Germany (Saxony, Thuringia, Brandenburg))

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