The trend of mean BMI values of US adults, birth cohorts 1882-1986 indicates that the obesity epidemic began earlier than hitherto thought

American Journal of Human Biology

Volumn 22, Issue 5, 2010, Pages 631-638

  Komlos, John ^a   Marek Brabec, ^b,c  

^a UNIVERSITY OF MUNICH   (Germany)

^b INSTITUTE OF COMPUTER SCIENCE   (Czech Republic)

^c NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF PUBLIC HEALTH   (Czech Republic)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

ADULT; ARTICLE; BODY MASS; BODY WEIGHT; COHORT ANALYSIS; CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY; EPIDEMIC; FEMALE; HEALTH SURVEY; HUMAN; MALE; NUTRITION; OBESITY; PREVALENCE; REGRESSION ANALYSIS; STATISTICS; TIME; UNITED STATES;

ADULT; BODY MASS INDEX; BODY WEIGHT; COHORT STUDIES; CULTURAL EVOLUTION; EPIDEMICS; FEMALE; HEALTH STATUS INDICATORS; HEALTH SURVEYS; HUMANS; MALE; NUTRITION SURVEYS; OBESITY; PREVALENCE; REGRESSION ANALYSIS; TIME; UNITED STATES;

EID: 77957273232     PISSN: 10420533     EISSN: 15206300     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1002/ajhb.21055     Document Type: Article

References (51)

1. Anderson PM, Butcher KF, Levine PB. 2003. Economic perspectives on childhood obesity. Econ Perspect (Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago) 3:30-48.
2. Bleich S, Cutler D, Murray C, Adams A. 2008. Why is the developed world obese? Annu Rev Publ Health 29:273-295.
3. Burkhauser RV, Cawley J, Schmeiser MD. 2009. The timing of the rise in U.S. obesity varies with measure of fatness. Econ Hum Biol 7:307-318.
4. Carson SA. 2009. Racial differences in body mass indices of men imprisoned in 19th century Texas. Econ Hum Biol 7:121-127.
5. Chou SY, Grossman M, Saffer H. 2004. An economic analysis of adult obesity: results from the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System. J Health Econ 23:565-587.
6. Chou SY, Rashad I, Grossman M. 2008. Fast-food restaurant advertising on television and its influence on childhood obesity. J Law Econ 51:599-618.
7. Cleveland WS. 1979. Robust locally weighted regression and smoothing scatterplots. J Am Stat Assoc 74:829-836.
8. Cleveland WS, Devlin SJ. 1988. Locally weighted regression: an approach to regression analysis by local fitting. J Am Stat Assoc 83:596-610.
9. Coclanis P, Komlos J. 1995. Nutrition and economic development in postreconstruction South Carolina: an anthropometric approach. Soc Sci Hist 19:91-116.
10. Cuff T. 1993. The body mass index values of mid-nineteenth-century west point cadets: a theoretical application of Waaler's curves to a historical population. Hist Meth 26:171-182.
11. Cutler DM, Glaeser EL, Shapiro JM. 2003. Why have Americans become more obese? J Econ Perspect 17:93-118.
12. Fisher GM. 1992. The development and history of the poverty thresholds. Soc Secur Bull 55:3-14.
13. Flegal KM, Carroll M, Ogden C, Johnson C. 2002. Prevalence and trends in obesity among US adults, 1999-2000. J Am Med Assoc 288:1723-1727.
14. Flegal KM, Carroll M, Kuczmarski RJ, Johnson C. 1998. Overweight and obesity in the United States: prevalence and trends, 1960-1994. Int J Obes 22:39-47.
15. Freedman DS, Khan LK, Serdula MK, Dietz WH, Srinivasan SR, Berenson G. 2005. The relation of childhood BMI to adult adiposity: the Bogalusa Heart Study. Pediatrics 115:22-27.
16. Guthrie J, Lin Biing-Hwan, Brazao E. 2002. Role of food prepared away from home in the American diet, 1977-1978 versus 1994-1996: changes and consequences. J Nutr Educ Behav 34:140-150.
17. Hamermesh D. 2010. Incentives, time use and BMI: the roles of eating, grazing and goods. Econ Hum Biol 8:2-15.
18. Hastie T, Tibshirani RM. 1990. Generalized additive models. London: Chapman and Hall.
19. Helmchen LA, Henderson R. 2004. Changes in the distribution of body mass index of white US men, 1890-2000. Ann Hum Biol 31:174-181.
20. Hobcraft J, Menken J, Preston S. 1982. Age, period, and cohort effects in demography: a review. Popul Index 48:4-43.
21. Holford TR. 1992. Analysing the temporal effects of age, period and cohort. Stat Meth Med Res 1:317-337.
22. Komlos J. 1987. The height and weight of west point cadets: dietary change in antebellum America. J Econ Hist 47:897-927.
23. Komlos J, Baur M. 2004. From the tallest to (one of) the fattest: the enigmatic fate of the size of the American population in the twentieth century. Econ Hum Biol 2:57-74.
24. Komlos J, Breitfelder A, Sunder M. 2009. The transition to post-industrial BMI values among US children. Am J Hum Biol 21:151-160.
25. Korn EL, Graubard BI. 1999. Analysis of health surveys. New York: John Wiley and Sons.
26. Lakdawalla D, Philipson T, Bhattacharya J. 2005. Welfare-enhancing technological change and the growth of obesity. Am Econ Rev 95:253-257.
27. Lakdawalla D, Philipson T. 2009. The growth of obesity and technological change. Econ Hum Biol 7:283-293.
28. Lin Biing-Hwan, Guthrie J, Frazao E. 2001. American children's diets not making the grade. Food Rev 24:8-17.
29. Norton K, Dollman J, Martin M, Harten N. 2006. Descriptive epidemiology of childhood overweight and obesity in Australia: 1901-2003. Int J Pediatr Obes 1:232-238.
30. Offer A. 2001. Body-weight and self-control in the USA and Britain since the 1950s. Soc Hist Med 14:79-106.
31. Offer A. 2006. The challenge of affluence: self-control and well-being in the USA and Britain since 1950. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
32. Offer A, Ulijaszek S. 2009. Obesity: the welfare regime hypothesis. Workshop 27/28 November 2009. Oxford: University of Oxford.
33. Ogden CL, Carroll MD, McDowell MA, Flegal KM. 2007. Obesity among adults in the United States-no change since 2003-2004. NCHS Data Brief no. 1:1-8.
34. Ogden CL, Carroll MD, Curtin LR, McDowell MA, Tabak CJ, Flegal KM. 2006. Prevalence of overweight and obesity in the United States, 1999-2004. J Am Med Assoc 295:1549-1555.
35. Ogden CL, Carroll MD, Flegal KM. 2008. High body mass index for age among US children and adolescents, 2003-2006. J Am Med Assoc 299:2401-2405.
36. Ogden CL, Fryar CD, Carroll MD, Flegal M. 2004. Mean body weight, height and body mass index, United States 1960-2002. Advance data from vital and health statistics, no.347, October 27, US Department of Health and Human Services, Centers for Disease Control for Health Statistics.
37. Philipson T, Posner R. 2003. The long run growth of obesity as a function of technological change. Perspect Biol Med 46:87-108.
38. Philipson T, Posner ,R. 2008. Is the obesity epidemic a public health problem? A decade of research on the economics of obesity. NBER Working Paper 14010.
39. Popkin BM. 2004. The nutrition transition: worldwide obesity dynamics and their determinants. Int J Obes 28:S2-S9.
40. Powell LM, Szczypka G, Chaloupka FJ, Braunschweig CL. 2007. Nutritional content of television food advertisements seen by children and adolescents in the United States. Pediatrics 120:576-583.
41. Rashad I, Grossman M, Shin-Yi Chou. 2006. The super size of America: an economic estimation of body mass index and obesity in adults. E Econ J 32:133-148.
42. Reither EN, Hauser RM, Yang Y. 2009. Do birth cohorts matter? Age-period-cohort analyses of the obesity epidemic in the United States. Soc Sci Med 69:1439-1448.
43. Roelants M, Hauspie R, Hoppenbrouwers K. 2009. References for growth and pubertal development from birth to 21 years in Flanders, Belgium. Ann Hum Biol 36:680-694.
44. Rosenbaum PR. 2005. Heterogeneity and causality: unit heterogeneity and design sensitivity in observational studies. Am Stat 59:147-152.
45. Ruskin G, Schor J. 2005. Junk Food Nation Who's to Blame for Childhood Obesity? The Nation, August 29, 2005. http://www.thenation.com/doc/20050829/ ruskin accessed March 26, 2010.
46. Sassi F, Devaux M, Cecchini M, Rusticelli E. 2009. The obesity epidemic: analysis of past and projected future trends in selected OECD countries. OECD Health Working Papers No. 45.
47. Shleifer A. 2009. The age of Milton Friedman. J Econ Lit 47:123-135.
48. Sunder M. 2004. The height of Tennessee convicts: another piece of the "antebellum puzzle. Econ Hum Biol 2:75-86.
49. Troiano RP, Flegal KM. 1998. Overweight children and adolescents: description, epidemiology, and demographics. Pediatrics 101:S497-S504.
50. Wood SN. 2006. Generalized additive models: an introduction with R. Chapman Hall. Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press.
51. Yatchew A. 1998. Nonparametric regression techniques in economics. J Econ Lit 36:669-721.