Abstract
Statistical analyses and simulation are combined to provide insights about the trends in weight gain in U.S. women of childbearing age. This population is of specific interest because it is central to understanding the trans-generational effects of obesity in future U.S. populations. We estimated BMI trends among women of childbearing age during the period 1980–2010 using the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) data. Then, we introduce a secondary approach; using the BMI profile of women by age and race as it was before the onset of the obesity epidemic (1970–1980) we project the BMI of women during the period 1980–2010 using U.S. Census demographic information. Hence, we compare the real-world situation to the age-adjusted scenario without the obesity epidemic. We found that there are differences in weight gain in black and white women, the racial disparity has worsened over time and that changes in the racial disparity were not because of changes in the age structure of the population.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Anderson PM and Butcher KE (2006) Childhood obesity: trends and potential causes. Future Child 16 (1), 19–45.
Barker DJ (1995) Fetal origins of coronary heart disease. BMJ 311 (6998), 171–174.
Boyle JP et al (2001) Projection of diabetes burden through 2050: impact of changing demography and disease prevalence in the U.S. Diabetes Care 24 (11), 1936–1940.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) (2008) Prevalence of overweight, obesity and extreme obesity among adults: United States, trends 1960–62 through 2005–2006, NCHS Health E-Statistics, http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/hestat/overweight/overweight_adult.pdf, accessed 20 November 2014.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) (2010) Prevalence of overweight, obesity, and extreme obesity among adults: United States, trends 1976–1980 through 2007–2008, NCHS Health E-Statistics, http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/hestat/obesity_adult_07_08/obesity_adult_07_08.pdf, accessed 20 November 2014.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) (2013) National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey Data. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Hyattsville, MD.
Dal Grande E, Gill T, Taylor AW, Chittleborough C and Carter P (2005) Obesity in South Australian adults-prevalence, projections and generational assessment over 13 years. Aust N Z J Public Health 29 (4), 343–348.
Flegal KM, Carroll MD, Kuczmarski RJ and Johnson CL (1998) Overweight and obesity in the United States: prevalence and trends, 1960–1994. International Journal of Obesity and Related Metabolic Disorders 22 (1), 39–47.
Flegal KM, Carroll MD, Ogden CL and Johnson CL (2002) Prevalence and trends in obesity among U.S. adults, 1999–2000. JAMA: The Journal of the American Medical Association 288 (14), 1723–1727.
Flegal KM, Carroll MD, Ogden CL and Curtin LR (2010) Prevalence and trends in obesity among US adults, 1999–2008. JAMA: The Journal of the American Medical Association 303 (3), 235–241.
Flegal KM, Carroll MD, Kit BK and Ogden CL (2012) Prevalence of obesity and trends in the distribution of boday mass index among US adults, 1999–2010. JAMA: The Journal of the American Medical Association 307 (5), 491–497.
Flegal KM and Troiano RP (2000) Changes in the distribution of body mass index of adults and children in the U.S. population. International Journal of Obesity 24 (7), 807–818.
Huang JS, Lee TA and Lu MC (2007) Prenatal programming of childhood overweight and obesity. Maternal and Child Health Journal 11 (5), 461–473.
Karoutsou E and Polymeris A (2012) Environmental endocrine disruptors and obesity. Endocr. Regul 46 (1), 37–46.
King H, Aubert RE and Herman WH (1998) Global burden of diabetes, 1995–2025: prevalence, numerical estimates, and projections. Diabetes Care 21 (9), 1414–1431.
Mainous AG et al (2007) Impact of the population at risk of diabetes on projections of diabetes burden in the United States: an epidemic on the way. Diabetologia 50 (5), 934–940.
Michels KB (2003) Early life predictors of chronic disease. The Journal of Womens Health 12 (2), 157–161.
Ogden CL, Carroll MD, Curtin LR, Mcdowell MA, Tabak CJ and Flegal KM (2006) Prevalence of overweight and obesity in the United States, 1999–2004. JAMA: The Journal of the American Medical Association 295 (13), 1549–1555.
Penman AD and Johnson WD (2006) The changing shape of the body mass index distribution curve in the population: implications for public health policy to reduce the prevalence of adult obesity. Preventing Chronic Disease 3 (3), A74.
Ravelli GP, Stein ZA and Susser MW (1976) Obesity in young men after famine exposure in utero and early infancy. The New England Journal of Medicine 295 (7), 349–353.
Ravelli AC, van Der Meulen JH, Osmond C, Barker DJ and Bleker OP (1999) Obesity at the age of 50 y in men and women exposed to famine prenatally. The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition 70 (5), 811–816.
Swinburn B, Sacks G and Ravussin E (2009) Increased food energy supply is more than sufficient to explain the US epidemic of obesity. The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition 90 (6), 1453–1456.
Swinburn BA and Sacks G et al (2011) The global obesity pandemic: shaped by global drivers and local environments. The Lancet 378 (9793), 804–814.
Thompson RF and Einstein FH (2010) Epigenetic basis for fetal origins of age-related disease. Journal of Womens Health 19 (3), 581–587.
US Census Bureau (1980) 1980 Census of Population and Housing County Population by Age, Sex, Race, and Spanish Origin. Table IV, http://www2.census.gov/prod2/decennial/documents/D1-D80-CTYP-14-TECHP.pdf.
US Census Bureau (1990) Census of Population: General Population Characteristics: Table 13: Single Years of Age by Sex, Race, and Hispanic Origin: 1990, https://www.census.gov/prod/cen1990/cp1/cp-1-1.pdf.
US Census Bureau (2000) Census 2000 PHC-T-9. Population by Age, Sex, Race, and Hispanic or Latino Origin: 2000. Table 3. Female Population by Age, Race and Hispanic or Latino Origin for the United States, http://www.census.gov/population/www/cen2000/briefs/phc-t9/tables/tab03.pdf.
US Census Bureau (2010) Census of Population and Housing: Summary File 2, http://www.census.gov/population/prod/cen2010/docs/sf2.pdf (accessed 12 December 2013).
Wang Y, Beydoun MA, Liang L, Caballero B and Kumanyika SK (2008) Will all Americans become overweight or obese? estimating the progression and cost of the US obesity epidemic. Obesity 16 (10), 2323–2330.
Wickelgren I (1998) Obesity: how big a problem? Science 280 (5368), 1364–1367.
Acknowledgements
Funding for work was made possible by 1R01MD004251–01 from the National Center on Minority Health and Health Disparities and in part by the National Science Foundation CMMI-1433602. The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect the official policies of the Department of Health and Human Services or of the National Science Foundation.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Appendix
Appendix
Superimposed plot of histograms of the merged 1970 and 1980 NHANES data for age groups 3 and 4 (women 20–24 and 25–29 years age, respectively) and PDF of the best Johnson SU fit (purple line) shown in Table 4. White and Black women shown seperately. The pink line is the Kernel (a smoothed nonpararmetric estimation of the density).
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Mayorga, M., Reifsnider, O., Yi, Z. et al. Trends in BMI and obesity in U.S. women of childbearing age during the period of 1980–2010. Health Syst 4, 176–186 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1057/hs.2014.29
Received:
Revised:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/hs.2014.29