I have the annual cross-sectional household data with the following variables that I am interested in:
a) Body Mass Index (BMI) for each head of household b) State of residence for household c) Education level for each head of household d) Age in years for each head of household
I merge the annual cross-sectional data by State with the state unemployment rate (UR). I repeat this process for years 1990-2010 and pooled all the resulting merged annual data. My objective is to examine the impact of state unemployment rate on Body Mass Index of household. Following is the model: \begin{equation} BMI_{ist}=\beta_{ur}UR_{st}+ \beta_{age}age_{ist}+\beta_{edu}education_{ist}+\text{state fixed effects} + \text{year fixed effects}+e_{ist} \end{equation} where, $i$ is household, $s$ is state, and $t$ is year. I would like to know whether we can call this model as fixed effect model and use fixed effect estimator (because we have state fixed effects). I am asking this question because I am using dependent variable which is measured at the household level and the main explanatory variable which is measured at the state level. I also would like to know if UR is assumed to be exogenous, is it okay to say that the coefficient on UR, $\beta_{ur}$, measures the causal effect of state unemployment rate on household level BMI.