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Title: Does Fat Beget Fat? The Relationship between Maternal Pre-Pregnancy BMI and Preschool Obesity
Resulting in 1 citation.
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Fletcher, Erin K. Averett, Susan L. |
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Does Fat Beget Fat? The Relationship between Maternal Pre-Pregnancy BMI and Preschool Obesity Presented: San Diego CA, Population Association of America Annual Meeting, April-May 2015 Cohort(s): Children of the NLSY79, NLSY79 Publisher: Population Association of America Keyword(s): Birthweight; Body Mass Index (BMI); Home Observation for Measurement of Environment (HOME); Modeling, Fixed Effects; Modeling, Instrumental Variables; Mothers; Obesity; Pre/post Natal Behavior; Pregnancy and Pregnancy Outcomes; Weight Permission to reprint the abstract has not been received from the publisher. The increasing prevalence of obesity during pregnancy raises concerns over the intergenerational transmission of obesity and its potential to exacerbate the current obesity epidemic. The fetal origins hypothesis posits that the intrauterine environment may have lasting effects on children's outcomes and mother's pre-pregnancy obesity has been associated with pediatric obesity. However, previous research is largely based on comparing individuals across families and hence cannot control for unobservable factors associated with both maternal and child obesity. We use within-family comparisons and instrumental variables to identify the effect of maternal pre-pregnancy obesity on obesity in children. Consistent with extant research, OLS models that rely on across-family comparisons indicate a significant correlation between maternal pre-pregnancy obesity and child obesity. However, maternal fixed effects render those associations insignificant. Instrumenting for mother’s BMI with her sisters' BMI confirms the null result indicating that the in utero transmission of obesity is likely not driving the increase in childhood obesity. |
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Bibliography Citation
Fletcher, Erin K. and Susan L. Averett. "Does Fat Beget Fat? The Relationship between Maternal Pre-Pregnancy BMI and Preschool Obesity." Presented: San Diego CA, Population Association of America Annual Meeting, April-May 2015. |