Like Mother, Like Father? Gender Assortative Transmission Of Child Overweight

J. Costa-Font and A. Sato
Authors registered in the RePEc Author Service: Mireia Jofre-Bonet

Health, Econometrics and Data Group (HEDG) Working Papers from HEDG, c/o Department of Economics, University of York

Abstract: We study the association between parental overweight and that of their offspring and explore whether parental influence on their children is gender assortative (e.g., maternal effect is more important for daughters). We take advantage of a unique dataset, the Health Survey for England, containing records of clinically measured weight and height of a representative sample of English children and their parents for the period 1996-2009. Our findings are consistent with the existence of strong intergenerational transmission of overweight and obesity from parents to their offspring. The effects are stronger among white children and older parents. However, we only find evidence of gender assortative transmission under some restrictive conditions, namely, we find an increased likelihood of overweight among girls when the mother is obese, and especially when girls are either at school or teenage age.

Keywords: Gender Assortative Parental Transmission; Child Obesity; Child Overweight; Role Models; Inter-generational Transmission (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dem, nep-ger and nep-hea
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Related works:
Working Paper: Like Mother, Like Father? Gender Assortative Transmission of Child Overweight (2016)
Working Paper: Like Mother, Like Father? Gender Assortative Transmission Of Child Overweight (2016)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:yor:hectdg:16/08

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