The Penalty of Obesity on GPA: Evaluating Mechanisms through Variation by Gender, Race, and School Subject

• In Event: 207 - Section on Sociology of Education Roundtable Session (one-hour).
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 23. Education, Identity, and the Body

Abstract

While prior research has suggested that obesity may cause lower grade point average (GPA), the mechanisms driving this relationship remain a subject of debate. In this study, I test whether the associations between obesity and GPA across race, sex, and academic course subjects follow patterns expected if the relationship largely functioned through social pathways such as differential treatment. Drawing on education research and feminist theory, I hypothesize a larger negative association between obesity and GPA for girls in English, where femininity is privileged, than in math, where stereotypical femininity is perceived to be a detriment. Among White girls in the National Longitudinal Study of Youth 1997, I find obesity in high school to be associated with a one-quarter standard deviation penalty on cumulative GPA in English, whereas any penalty of obesity on GPA in math is substantively small and statistically non-significant. In contrast, the negative relationship between obesity and GPA for White boys remains stable across course subjects. Net of controls, associations between obesity and GPA are not significant for Black or Hispanic students of either sex in either course subject. This study adds to a growing literature suggesting that the relationship between obesity and socioeconomic outcomes may result in large part from how institutions interact differently with bodies of different sizes, while challenging explanations that eschew social pathways altogether.

Author

• Amelia R. Branigan, Northwestern University