During the postwar period German states pursued policies to increase the share of young Germans obtaining a university entrance diploma (Abitur) by building more academic track schools, but the timing of educational expansion differed between states. This creates exogenous variation in the availability of upper secondary schooling, which allows…

Background: This study examines whether the extent of states' physical education (PE) requirement policies and the prevalence of schools requiring PE are associated with children's physical activity (PA) and obesity. Methods: Two cycles (2002-2003 and 2006-2007) of cross-sectional data with individual- and state-level information were…

Childhood obesity is increasingly prevalent in Western and non-Western societies. The authors related multiple dimensions of physical self-concept to body composition for 763 Chinese children aged 8 to 15 and compared the results with Western research. Compared with Western research, gender differences favoring boys were generally much smaller for…