Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

The Impact Of Bmi On Mental Health: Further Evidence From Genetic Markers, Vikesh Amin, Carlos A. Flores, Alfonso Flores-Lagunes

Center for Policy Research

We examine the relationship between body mass index (BMI) and mental health for young adults and elderly individuals using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health and the Health & Retirement Study. While ordinary least squares (OLS) estimates show that BMI is significantly associated with worse mental health in both young adulthood and old age, they are likely to be confounded by (i) unobserved factors that affect both BMI and mental health and (ii) reverse causality. To tackle confounding, we take two complementary approaches. First, we use a polygenic score for BMI as an instrumental variable (IV) and …