 Vertical transmission of overweight: Evidence from a sample of English adopteesJoan Costa-Font, Mireia Jofre-Bonet and Julian Le Grand Food Policy, 2020, vol. 97, issue C Abstract: Vertical influences can significantly shape children overweight by affecting both genetics and the environment children are exposed to. This paper examines the vertical (parental) transmission of child overweight drawing upon a fifteen year sample of English adults and their children, both adopted and biological, for which we can retrieve clinical measures height and weight. We find that, when both parents are overweight, children exhibit an increased likelihood of overweight, irrespective of whether they are adopted or biological children. When both parents are obese as opposed to overweight the picture is different. We find that the likelihood of child overweight increases by 16.7 percentage points among natural (non-adopted) children but only by 4.5 percentage points among adopted children. This suggests that the transmission of overweight when both parents are obese is not merely genetic, and what has been called vertical or parental transmission plays a non-negligible role. Our findings are validated by are a battery of robustness checks. Keywords: Vertical transmission; Cultural transmission; Overweight; Children; Adopted children; Biological children; Biological parents; Body Mass Index; Sample selection (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jfpoli:v:97:y:2020:i:c:s0306919220301767 DOI: 10.1016/j.foodpol.2020.101972 Access Statistics for this article Food Policy is currently edited by J. Kydd More articles in Food Policy from Elsevier |
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