Artikel
Intergenerational transmission of self-reported body mass index in the context of social mobility – evidence from German longitudinal data
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Autoren
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Michael Porst
- Robert Koch-Institut, Abteilung für Epidemiologie und Gesundheitsmonitoring, Berlin, Germany
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Alexander Rommel
- Robert Koch-Institut, Abteilung für Epidemiologie und Gesundheitsmonitoring, Berlin, Germany
| Veröffentlicht: | 6. September 2024 |
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Gliederung
Text
Background: Evidence suggest robust intergenerational correlates of height, weight, and body mass index (BMI). BMI is closely related to health behaviors that become poorer with lower socioeconomic status (SES). Thus, questions of inequality arise when poor health is persistent. We assume that social mobility (SoM) is associated with changes in health behaviors and hypothesize that the degree of transmission varies between mobile groups.
Methods: We use longitudinal data from the German Socio-Economic Panel. We build a sample of offspring aged 15 to 35 years (12,108 person-years; 50.7% male, time span: 2002-2020) and link information on their parents. BMI (self-reported) is calculated as body weight (in kilograms) divided by height (in meters) squared. We measure SoM using offspring and parental education. A comparison leads to three groups: downwardly mobile (D), no mobility (N), and upwardly mobile (U). We estimate fixed effects panel models to obtain elasticities by SoM groups (log-log linear model).
Results: After controlling for sociodemographic and household characteristics, we obtain elasticities of 0.156 (D; standard error (SE): 0.043), 0.050 (N; SE: 0.022), and 0.047 (U; SE: 0.025) between mothers and offspring. BMI-elasticities between father and offspring range from 0.137 (D; SE: 0.046), 0.022 (N; SE: 0.023), and 0.068 (U; SE: 0.036). The F-test shows significant group differences between the elasticities of downward and immobile individuals (p < 0.05).
Conclusion: We obtain differences in BMI transmission between SoM groups. While BMI elasticities of immobile and upwardly mobile individuals are modest and not significant at the 5% level, a considerable degree of persistence can be found for downwardly mobile ones. For the downward movers, the change in BMI of the offspring is still influenced by the shared family environment, highlighting the need for behavioral prevention at the early life stages.
The authors declare that they have no competing interests.
The authors declare that an ethics committee vote is not required.
The contribution has already been published: [1]
References
- 1.
- Porst M, Rommel A. Intergenerational transmission of self-reported body mass index in the context of social mobility - evidence from german longitudinal data. Population Medicine. 2023;5(Supplement):A807. DOI: 10.18332/popmed/164236
