Abstract
The study of obesity and mortality has elicited many controversies over the past two decades. Nonetheless, there has been a growing consensus that obesity is a main threat to future improvements in life expectancy globally. This Chapter reviews some promising methodological advances that have occurred in the analysis of the obesity and mortality relationship. It argues that a main advancement has been the incorporation of individual weight histories into statistical models to identify the full life-course effect of obesity, which can translate into a better understanding of obesity’s effect at the population level. The Chapter then reviews the recent evidence on obesity’s role in stagnating improvements in U.S. life expectancy, which began around 2010. The chapter concludes by providing a set of recommendations on further advancing our understanding of obesity’s aggregate effects on mortality.
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Mehta, N.K. (2022). Obesity and Mortality. In: Garcia-Alexander, G., Poston, Jr., D.L. (eds) International Handbook of the Demography of Obesity. International Handbooks of Population, vol 12. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-10936-2_6
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