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The Relationship Between Maternal Pre-pregnancy BMI and Preschool Obesity

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Applied Demography and Public Health in the 21st Century

Part of the book series: Applied Demography Series ((ADS,volume 8))

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Abstract

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 might have lasting effects on children’s outcomes. A large literature establishes that mother’s pre-pregnancy obesity is correlated with obesity in her children. 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 both within-family comparisons and an instrumental variable approach on a sample of 4435 children to identify the effect of maternal pre-pregnancy obesity on obesity in preschool-aged children. Consistent with extant research, OLS models that rely on across-family comparisons indicate a significant correlation between maternal pre-pregnancy obesity and preschool obesity . However, maternal fixed effects render those associations insignificant. Instrumenting for mother’s BMI with her sisters’ BMI values 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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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Economics, Lafayette College, Quad Drive, Easton, PA, 18042, USA

    Susan L. Averett

  2. Institute for Research in Labor-IZA, Bonn, Germany

    Susan L. Averett

  3. Harvard University, 79 JFK St., Cambridge, MA, 02138, USA

    Erin K. Fletcher

Authors
  1. Susan L. Averett
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  2. Erin K. Fletcher
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Susan L. Averett .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Hobby Center for Public Policy, University of Houston, Houston, Texas, USA

    M. Nazrul Hoque

  2. Institute for Demographic and and Socioeconomic Research, University of Texas at San Antonio, San Antonio, USA

    Beverly Pecotte

  3. Health Statistics Branch, Center for Public Health Practice, Arkansas Department of Health, Little Rock, Arkansas, USA

    Mary A. McGehee

Appendix 1

Appendix 1

See Table 12.7.

Table 12.7 IV, OLS and FE results using mother’s BMI as a continuous variable on o a continuous measure of child’s obesity: BMI percentile
Full size table

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Averett, S.L., Fletcher, E.K. (2017). The Relationship Between Maternal Pre-pregnancy BMI and Preschool Obesity. In: Hoque, M., Pecotte, B., McGehee, M. (eds) Applied Demography and Public Health in the 21st Century. Applied Demography Series, vol 8. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-43688-3_12

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-43688-3_12

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-43686-9

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-43688-3

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