Search Results

Methods: Young adults born between 1980 and 1990 who participated in the Young Adult file of the 1979 National Longitudinal Study of Youth were examined (N=3901). The accumulation of childhood poverty is captured via poverty exposure from each survey year from the prenatal year through age 18 years. Body mass index was calculated and categorised into the reference criteria for adults outlined by the Center for Disease Control. Logistic regression models were stratified by race/ethnicity and included a term interacting poverty and gender, along with a number of covariates, including various longitudinal socioeconomic status measures and indicators for the intergenerational transmission of economic disadvantage and body weight.

Results: Reoccurring exposure to childhood poverty was positively related to OV/OB for white, black and Hispanic young adult women and inversely related for white young adult men. A direct relationship between the accumulation of childhood poverty and OV/OB was not found for black and Hispanic young adult men.

Conclusions: Helping families move out of poverty may improve the long-term health status of white, black and Hispanic female children as young adults. Community area interventions designed to change impoverished community environments and assist low-income families reduce family level correlates of poverty may help to reduce the weight disparities observed in young adulthood.

Methods: Analyses was based on adolescents born between 1975 and 1991 to women from the 1979 National Longitudinal Study of Youth data set (N=4762). Three types of family-level stressors were captured from birth to age 15: family disruption and conflict, financial strain, and maternal risky health behaviors, along with a total cumulative risk index. Body mass index was constructed on reference criteria for children outlined by the Centers for Disease Control. Multivariate logistic regressions were conducted for the three types of family stressors and for the total cumulative index.

Results: The accumulation of family disruption and conflict and financial stress was positively related to female adolescents being overweight/obese. Childhood exposure to maternal risky health behaviors was positively associated with higher weight status for male adolescents. Total cumulative stress was related to overweight/obesity for females, but not males.

Conclusion: Different family-level stress indices are associated with the weight status of female and male adolescents. Combining types of family-level stress into one cumulative index appears to mask these differences.

Methods: Data from the Children of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 was used to estimate the odds of being overweight in young adulthood based on family instability experienced during childhood (n = 5139). Family instability was measured by young adults’ exposure to family structure transitions from birth to the age of 18 as defined by mother’s formation and dissolution of romantic unions. Body mass index was directly assessed in young adulthood.

Results: A series of logistic regression models predicted the odds of young adults being overweight or obese. Results indicate that cumulative family structure transitions during childhood increase the odds for young adult females born to married mothers to be overweight by 19%. Family instability, however, does not increase the probability for young adult females nor males born to single mothers to be overweight.

Conclusions: Experiencing family instability has a negative accumulating impact on the weight status of young adult females born to married mothers. Interventions during childhood are important to prevent females who experience multiple family transitions from becoming overweight as young adults.