Parental Separation and Children’s Body Mass Index over the Life Course

Marco Tosi , University of Padua

Research has shown that parental separation is associated with worse physical health and unhealthy weight gains during childhood. However, limited empirical attention has been given to the evolution of child health before, upon and following parental union dissolution. Drawing on data from the Child Development Supplement (1997-2007) and the Transition to Adulthood Supplement (2005-2017) of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, I analyze a cohort of American children aged 0-12 in 1997 to investigate whether parental union dissolution affects children’s Body Mass Index (BMI) and overweight/obesity risk in the short and long run (n=2,675). I also investigate whether these associations vary according to parental socio-economic position, measured by parental education and race/ethnicity. The results from ‘distributed’ fixed-effects linear regression models – which account for observed and unobserved time-constant characteristics – show that parental union dissolution is associated with increases in child BMI and an increased risk of becoming overweight/obese among female but not male children. The negative effect of union dissolution on girls’ weight status become significant staring from the year of separation and remains higher than the baseline for at least ten years after the event. Unhealthy weight gains following parental separation are more pronounced among children with lower-educated and non-White parents. The findings suggest that parental union dissolution contributes to increase socioeconomic inequalities in childhood obesity. Consistent with the ‘diverging destinies’ thesis, the social background differences in the health outcomes of children tend to be amplified when negative life course events, such as parental separation, occur.

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 Presented in Session 78. Nutrition and Metabolism Disorders