 Do high school experiences shape midlife body weight?Michelle L. Frisco, Emily A. Lybbert, Chandra Muller, Eric Grodsky and J. Robert Warren Social Science & Medicine, 2025, vol. 367, issue C Abstract: This study investigates how the high school experiences of a nationally representative cohort of 1980 United States' high school sophomores and seniors are associated with midlife weight. Drawing from theory and previous research led us to expect that family and high school SES, school type, and curricular tracks could be key dimensions of people's high school lives that had salience for midlife weight, possibly in gendered ways. This premise was largely supported in bivariate analyses. In fully adjusted models, family and high school SES were related to women's midlife weight as measured by BMI and having obesity above and beyond a wide range of control variables including academic attainment and high school weight. Among men, high school SES and private school attendance retained significant associations with having obesity in fully adjusted models. Study findings identify important features of individuals' high school lives that are related to later life weight, and they provide evidence that attainment is not the only dimension of people's educational careers that has implications for weight. Date: 2025 Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:socmed:v:367:y:2025:i:c:s027795362500022x Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from DOI: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2025.117693 Access Statistics for this article Social Science & Medicine is currently edited by Ichiro (I.) Kawachi and S.V. (S.V.) Subramanian More articles in Social Science & Medicine from Elsevier |
Is your work missing from RePEc? Here is how to contribute.
Questions or problems? Check the EconPapers FAQ or send mail to .
EconPapers is hosted by the
School of Business at Örebro University.