Abstract
AbstractThis paper investigates whether encouraging children to become more physically active in their everyday life affects their primary school performance. We use data from a field quasi‐experiment called the Active Living Program, which aimed to increase active modes of transportation to school and active play among 8‐ to 12‐year‐olds living in low socioeconomic status (SES) areas in the Netherlands. Difference‐in‐differences estimations reveal that while the interventions increase time spent on physical activity during school hours, they negatively affect school performance, especially among the worst‐performing students. Further analyses reveal that increased restlessness during instruction time is a potential mechanism for this negative effect. Our results suggest that the commonly found positive effects of exercising or participating in sports on educational outcomes may not be generalizable to physical activity in everyday life. Policymakers and educators who seek to increase physical activity in everyday life need to weigh the health and well‐being benefits against the probability of increasing inequality in school performance.
Highlights
Due to the global increase of childhood obesity and sedentary behavior, governments and institutions advocate increasing the amount of time primary school children spend on physical activity.2 the benefits of physical activity for physical and mental health are welldocumented, the current literature is still unsettled regarding the causal effects on educational outcomes
Our results suggest that the commonly found positive effects of exercising or participating in sports on educational performance may not be generalizable to physical activity in everyday life
Considering that the Active Living interventions aim to decrease sedentary behavior, we hypothesize that time spent on physical activity (PA) is an important driver of this effect. This means that in the setting we study, it is still possible to conclude that PA has a positive effect on school performance if the Active Living Program has a negative effect on time spent on PA
Summary
Due to the global increase of childhood obesity and sedentary behavior, governments and institutions advocate increasing the amount of time primary school children spend on physical activity. the benefits of physical activity for physical and mental health are welldocumented, the current literature is still unsettled regarding the causal effects on educational outcomes. Physical activity is expected to positively affect cognition and thereby school performance from a physiological viewpoint, but the effect of increasing physical activity on school performance is theoretically ambiguous. Even if physical activity has positive effects on children’s cognitive abilities, increasing sports participation may decrease focus and attention during instruction periods, or crowd out time investments in other potentially beneficial activities such as studying or active play.. Crowd out potentially harmful activities such as smoking or watching television, leading to a zero or positive effect on school performance. The net effect on school performance depends on the relative gain (or harm) from the activity that was crowded out compared to the gains from physical activity
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