Social and economic consequences of overweight in adolescence and young adulthood
Female; Humans; Male; Adult; Prevalence; Self Concept; Socioeconomic Factors; adolescent; Adolescent Transitions; Educational Status; Marriage; Adolescent Psychology/statistics & numerical data; Income/statistics & numerical data; Obesity/economics/epidemiology/psychology; Poverty/statistics & numerical data
BACKGROUND AND METHODS: Overweight in adolescents may have deleterious effects on their subsequent self-esteem, social and economic characteristics, and physical health. We studied the relation between overweight and subsequent educational attainment, marital status, household income, and self-esteem in a nationally representative sample of 10,039 randomly selected young people who were 16 to 24 years old in 1981. Follow-up data were obtained in 1988 for 65 to 79 percent of the original cohort, depending on the variable studied. The characteristics of the subjects who had been overweight in 1981 were compared with those for young people with asthma, musculoskeletal abnormalities, and other chronic health conditions. Overweight was defined as a body-mass index above the 95th percentile for age and sex. RESULTS: In 1981, 370 of the subjects were overweight. Seven years later, women who had been overweight had completed fewer years of school (0.3 year less; 95 percent confidence interval, 0.1 to 0.6; P = 0.009), were less likely to be married (20 percent less likely; 95 percent confidence interval, 13 to 27 percent; P < 0.001), had lower household incomes ($6,710 less per year; 95 percent confidence interval, $3,942 to $9,478; P < 0.001), and had higher rates of household poverty (10 percent higher; 95 percent confidence interval, 4 to 16 percent; P < 0.001) than the women who had not been overweight, independent of their base-line socioeconomic status and aptitude-test scores. Men who had been overweight were less likely to be married (11 percent less likely; 95 percent confidence interval, 3 to 18 percent; P = 0.005). In contrast, people with the other chronic conditions we studied did not differ in these ways from the nonoverweight subjects. We found no evidence of an effect of overweight on self-esteem. CONCLUSIONS: Overweight during adolescence has important social and economic consequences, which are greater than those of many other chronic physical conditions. Discrimination against overweight persons may account for these results.
1993
Gortmaker SL; Must A; Perrin JM; Sobol AM; Dietz WH
The New England Journal Of Medicine
1993
Article information provided for research and reference use only. PedPalASCNET does not hold any rights over the resource listed here. All rights are retained by the journal listed under publisher and/or the creator(s).
Journal Article
<a href="http://doi.org/10.1056/NEJM199309303291406" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer">10.1056/NEJM199309303291406</a>
An Unexpected Success Story: Transition to Adulthood in Youth With Chronic Physical Health Conditions.
Multivariate Analysis; Adolescent Transitions; ADULTHOOD; TEENAGERS -- Health & hygiene; UNEMPLOYMENT
We used data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY; 1987) to examine the relationship between having a chronic physical health condition during youth (ages 14 to 21), and the subsequent transition to adulthood among a nationally representative sample (10,485), followed from 1979 to 1986. We controlled for theoretically important baseline characteristics of the youths and their families in multivariate regression models examining educational attainment, marriage, income, unemployment, and self-esteem. Analyses suggest that adolescents and young adults with chronic physical health conditions are at a slightly higher risk of problems in early adult life, but these effects are overshadowed by more potent social, economic, and demographic characteristics of both the youths and their families of origin. These results were unexpected; we had hypothesized a wide variety of mechanisms whereby individuals with chronic conditions would not perform as well as their healthy peers in
1993
Gortmaker SL; Perrin JM; Weitzman M; Homer CJ; Sobol Arthur M
Journal Of Research On Adolescence (lawrence Erlbaum)
1993
Article information provided for research and reference use only. PedPalASCNET does not hold any rights over the resource listed here. All rights are retained by the journal listed under publisher and/or the creator(s).
Journal Article