The intergenerational transmission of body mass index across countries

Peter Dolton and Mimi Xiao

LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library

Abstract: There is a worldwide epidemic of obesity. We are just beginning to understand its consequences for child obesity. This paper addresses one important component of the crisis; namely the extent to which adiposity, or more specifically, BMI, is passed down from one generation to the next. We find that the intergenerational elasticity of BMI is very similar across countries and relatively constant – at 0.2 per parent. Our substantive finding is that this elasticity is very comparable across time and countries – even if these countries are at very different stages of economic development. Quantile analysis suggests that this intergenerational transmission mechanism is substantively different across the distribution of children’s BMI; more than double for the most obese children what it is for the thinnest children. These findings have important consequences for the health of the world’s children.

Keywords: Intergenerational; Body mass index (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I1 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017-02-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hea
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (12)

Published in Economics and Human Biology, 1, February, 2017, 24, pp. 140-152. ISSN: 1570-677X

Downloads: (external link)
http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/68952/ Open access version. (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ehl:lserod:68952

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library LSE Library Portugal Street London, WC2A 2HD, U.K.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by LSERO Manager ().