Effects of Duration and Timing of Childhood Exposure to Neighborhood Disadvantage on Obesity in Adulthood

• In Event: 089 - Regular Session. Multiple Facets of the Social and Physical Environment on Health

Abstract

Evidence suggests that residents of socioeconomically disadvantaged neighborhoods are at increased risk for obesity. Yet most research employs cross-sectional data, which implicitly ignores continuity and change in the residential conditions to which individuals are exposed over time. Using the 1970-2011 waves of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics merged with census data on respondents’ neighborhoods, this study estimates marginal structural models with inverse probability of treatment and censoring weights to investigate the effects of duration and timing of exposure to neighborhood disadvantage from birth through age 17 on obesity incidence in early adulthood. Findings reveal that prolonged exposure to neighborhood disadvantage throughout childhood and adolescence is strikingly more common among African Americans than whites and is associated with significantly greater odds of being obese at least once between ages 18 and 30. Moreover, exposure to neighborhood-level deprivation during adolescence appears more consequential for future obesity than exposures earlier in childhood.

Author

• Nicole Dolores Kravitz-Wirtz, University of Washington