Quantifying Socioeconomic Inequality in Childhood Obesity

Mark Mitchell, Justus Laugwitz () and Patricio Valdivieso Massa* ()
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Mark Mitchell: School of Economics, University of Edinburgh
Justus Laugwitz: University of Edinburgh
Patricio Valdivieso Massa*: Heriot-Watt University

No 2016, Working Papers from University of Strathclyde Business School, Department of Economics

Abstract: We use longitudinal data on 11,000 UK-born children to examine the relationship between parental weight and income and children’s overweight across childhood. We find that children are three times as likely to be overweight or obese at 14 if they have an obese parent. Irrespective of their parents’ weight, children in the poorest 20% of families are twice as likely to be overweight or obese. These relationships persist through childhood, strengthen over time, and are impervious to observed behavioural differences between groups. This suggests that differences in shared social and economic circumstances across childhood lead to the emergence of stark inequality in childhood obesity across the income distribution by age 14.

Keywords: Childhood obesity; health; inequality; intergenerational transmission (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I0 I12 I14 J13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: pages
Date: 2020-11, Revised 2021-01
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:str:wpaper:2016

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