Body mass index (BMI) increases early in life and has risen more sharply with age in recent generations, compared with previous generations, a study finds. Recent decades have witnessed a rapid rise in obesity among children and adolescents. As a step toward estimating the magnitude of this future disease burden, Christine Walsh, Kathleen Mullan Harris, and colleagues analyzed changes in BMI during the aging process for various sociodemographic groups. The authors combined data from four national longitudinal surveys of 64,999 respondents ranging in age from 11 years to 107 years. The participants were grouped into 17 distinct five-year birth cohorts spanning from before 1905 to 1984. Each successive cohort had a higher average BMI, and a steeper rise in BMI with age, compared with the prior cohort. Both racial and educational disparities in BMI were larger for more recent cohorts than for previous cohorts, emerged early in life, and were more substantial for women than for men. According to the authors, the findings may inform strategies to prevent rapid weight gain during the critical window of adolescence and young adulthood, reduce racial and education-based disparities in obesity, and ultimately improve health outcomes at all ages.
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Article #20-20167: "Life-course trajectories of body mass index from adolescence to old age: Racial and educational disparities," by Yang Claire Yang et al.
MEDIA CONTACTS: Christine Walsh, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC; tel: 301-760-8598; email: <chriseli@live.unc.edu>; Kathleen Mullan Harris, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC; tel: 919-824-3466; email: <kathie_harris@unc.edu>
Journal
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences