Discussion paper

DP11330 Quality Leisure Time and Youth Development

This paper first develops a simple model to clarify the links between leisure time use and skill formation. It then explores empirically how youths allocate their time. We focus on sports as a popular activity and estimate its effect on behavioral and economic outcomes. We exploit data from the German Socio-Economic Panel that offers the unique advantage of both a large, representative sample and high quality behavioral measures. We employ a flexible strategy combining propensity score matching and regression to account for self selection. Our results suggest that structured leisure activities like sports contribute to the development of nonacademic skills.

£6.00
Citation

Osikominu, A (2016), ‘DP11330 Quality Leisure Time and Youth Development‘, CEPR Discussion Paper No. 11330. CEPR Press, Paris & London. https://cepr.org/publications/dp11330