 Overweight grandsons and grandfathers’ starvation exposureJournal of Health Economics, 2023, vol. 91, issue C Abstract: Much of the increase in the prevalence of overweight and obesity has been in developing countries with a history of famines and malnutrition. This paper is the first to examine overweight among adult grandsons of grandfathers exposed to starvation during developmental ages. I study grandsons born to grandfathers who served in the Union Army during the US Civil War (1861-5) where some grandfathers experienced severe net malnutrition because they suffered a harsh POW experience. I find that male-line but not female-line grandsons of grandfathers who survived a severe captivity during their growing years faced a 21% increase in mean overweight and a 2% increase in mean BMI compared to grandsons of non-POWs. Male-line grandsons descended from grandfathers who experienced a harsh captivity faced a 22%–28% greater risk of dying every year after age 45 relative to grandsons descended from non-POWs, with overweight accounting for 9%–14% of the excess risk. Keywords: Health production; Multigenerational transmission of health; Overweight (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jhecon:v:91:y:2023:i:c:s0167629623000735 DOI: 10.1016/j.jhealeco.2023.102796 Access Statistics for this article Journal of Health Economics is currently edited by J. P. Newhouse, A. J. Culyer, R. Frank, K. Claxton and T. McGuire More articles in Journal of Health Economics from Elsevier |
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