Wealth and Obesity among Midlife Adults from 1996 to 2012

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Abstract

Our current understanding of the SES-obesity relationship is primarily based on measures of SES that include education, occupation, and income, but as one enters midlife, wealth becomes an importation indicator of social status, determinant of lifestyle, and source of protection against stressful financial shocks. Nevertheless, we know little about the relationship between wealth and obesity in midlife and whether this wealth-obesity relationship varies by gender and race. To address this gap, this study considers two questions. First, do the components of wealth, including home value, car value, debt, checking/savings, and investments, have independent associations with obesity net of individuals’ education, occupation, and income during midlife? Second, do race and gender differences exist in the association between the components of wealth and midlife obesity?

For the analysis, we use data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 (NLSY-79), a representative and longitudinal sample of U.S. men and women. We use five survey waves of information on the obesity and wealth for 6,979 adults from their thirties in 1996 to their late forties and early fifties in 2012. The results provide evidence of a robust association between wealth and midlife obesity net of educational degrees, occupation, family income, and sociodemographic control but also reveals heterogeneity in the wealth-obesity associations across components of wealth and social groups. More specifically, the wealth-obesity relationship appears strongest among Black and White women and is driven by home value and debt. For both Black and White men, however, the probability of obesity is very similar to the overall proportion of obesity and remains relatively stable across quartiles of wealth.

Authors

• Joseph Daniel Wolfe, University of Alabama at Birmingham

• Elizabeth Helene Baker, University of Alabama at Birmingham