The Sequencing of a College Degree during the Transition to Adulthood: Implications for Obesity

• In Event: 473 - Section on Aging and the Life Course Paper Session. Health and the Life Course

Abstract

Sequencing refers to the ordering of social roles, and people who enter the same social roles but in different sequences can have different life outcomes. In this study we consider the potential role of sequencing for the field of education and health. We develop the hypothesis that better levels of health will be present among individuals who earn a college degree before the transitions into the social roles of parent and spouse as compared to individuals who earn a college degree afterwards. To test this hypothesis we focus on the outcome of obesity and use data from the nationally-representative panel study of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health). Among college graduates, entry into marriage before as compared to after college completion was associated with a 50% higher probability of becoming obese. Birth of a child before as compared to after college completion was associated with more than a two-fold increase in the probability of becoming obese, but only for Black men. These results provide new insights into how education maintains a lifelong association with health, and suggest that it shapes the initial transitions to major social roles so that they lead to lifelong trajectories of better health.

Authors

• Richard A. Miech, University of Michigan

• Shawn Bauldry, University of Alabama-Birmingham