Childhood obesity and maternal education in Ireland

David Madden ()

Economics & Human Biology, 2017, vol. 27, issue PA, 114-125

Abstract: This paper analyses the socioeconomic gradient of childhood obesity in Ireland using the Growing Up in Ireland data with three innovations compared to previous work in the area. A different measure of socioeconomic status, maternal education, is employed. In addition, the depth and severity of obesity are examined as well as the incidence. Finally, the use of two waves of longitudinal data permits the analysis of the persistence of obesity. Results show that overall childhood obesity stabilised between the two waves. However the socioeconomic gradient becomes steeper in wave 2 for girls and in particular when depth, severity and persistence of obesity are accounted for. Girls whose mothers fail to complete secondary education are shown to be at a particular disadvantage.

Keywords: Obesity; Socioeconomic gradient; Persistence (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I14 I31 J13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (11)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1570677X16301940
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

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:eee:ehbiol:v:27:y:2017:i:pa:p:114-125

DOI: 10.1016/j.ehb.2017.05.004

Access Statistics for this article

Economics & Human Biology is currently edited by J. Komlos, Inas R Kelly and Joerg Baten

More articles in Economics & Human Biology from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().