Life Cycle Development of Obesity and Its Determinants in Six European Countries

Sandra Cavaco, Tor Eriksson and Ali Skalli

No 2013-08, CEI Working Paper Series from Center for Economic Institutions, Institute of Economic Research, Hitotsubashi University

Abstract: This paper empirically examines the role and relative importance of parents’ and individuals’ own socioeconomic status and how their impacts on the probability of overweight and obesity evolve over the life cycle. The impact of individuals’ health behaviours on their obesity status later in life is also studied. We use data from Denmark, Finland, France, Greece, the Netherlands and the U.K. in which about 6,000 individuals aged 50 to 65 are surveyed and where individuals’ height and weight at different ages (25, 25, 45 and current age) are available. We perform “repeated cross-sections” analyses as well as dynamic probit analyses of the individuals’ obesity histories. Key findings are: (i) parents’ socioeconomic status predicts obesity in early adulthood whereas the individual’s own socioeconomic status as adult is more important in explaining obesity at later stages of the life cycle, (ii) changes in obesity status are associated with changes in health behaviours, (iii) obesity in late adulthood is strongly and positively correlated with overweight and obesity in younger ages, and (iv) cross-country differences in obesity and overweight largely remain after controlling for parental and childhood factors and individuals’ health behaviours.

Keywords: Obesity; socioeconomic status; life cycle; cross-country differences (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 41 pages
Date: 2014-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eur and nep-hea
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)

Downloads: (external link)
https://hermes-ir.lib.hit-u.ac.jp/hermes/ir/re/28354/wp2013-8.pdf

Related works:
Journal Article: Life cycle development of obesity and its determinants in six European countries (2014)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hit:hitcei:2013-08

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CEI Working Paper Series from Center for Economic Institutions, Institute of Economic Research, Hitotsubashi University Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Reiko Suzuki ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).