IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/socmed/v68y2009i4p708-716.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Obesity, race/ethnicity and the multiple dimensions of socioeconomic status during the transition to adulthood: A factor analysis approach

Author

Listed:
  • Scharoun-Lee, Melissa
  • Adair, Linda S.
  • Kaufman, Jay S.
  • Gordon-Larsen, Penny

Abstract

Racial/ethnic disparities in obesity widen dramatically during young adulthood in the US. Understanding racial/ethnic differences in the association between socioeconomic status (SES) and obesity can provide insight on these disparities. However, the delay and complexity of the transition to adulthood create challenges for defining SES using traditional, single indicators, such as income or years of education. Our objective was to define a multidimensional measure of young adult SES using exploratory factor analysis and to investigate whether distinct SES dimensions differentially predicted obesity across race/ethnicity in 11,250 young adults (mean age = 21.9 years) from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Wave III: 2000-2001). Four factors (social advantage; schooling; employment; and economic hardship) extracted from a principal factor analysis on 38 SES indicators comprised our multidimensional measure of young adult SES. The respondents' scores on each factor were entered into gender-stratified Poisson regression models to estimate the relative risk of young adult obesity for a contrast of approximately one standard deviation in score. The association of the "Social advantage" and "Economic hardship" factors with obesity differed by race/ethnicity (pÂ

Suggested Citation

  • Scharoun-Lee, Melissa & Adair, Linda S. & Kaufman, Jay S. & Gordon-Larsen, Penny, 2009. "Obesity, race/ethnicity and the multiple dimensions of socioeconomic status during the transition to adulthood: A factor analysis approach," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 68(4), pages 708-716, February.
  • Handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:68:y:2009:i:4:p:708-716
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277-9536(08)00649-7
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Oakes, J. Michael & Rossi, Peter H., 2003. "The measurement of SES in health research: current practice and steps toward a new approach," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 56(4), pages 769-784, February.
    2. Charles L. Baum & William F. Ford, 2004. "The wage effects of obesity: a longitudinal study," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 13(9), pages 885-899, September.
    3. Greenland, S., 1989. "Modeling and variable selection in epidemiologic analysis," American Journal of Public Health, American Public Health Association, vol. 79(3), pages 340-349.
    4. Ball, Kylie & Crawford, David, 2005. "Socioeconomic status and weight change in adults: a review," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 60(9), pages 1987-2010, May.
    5. Kim, Daniel & Subramanian, S.V. & Gortmaker, Steven L. & Kawachi, Ichiro, 2006. "US state- and county-level social capital in relation to obesity and physical inactivity: A multilevel, multivariable analysis," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 63(4), pages 1045-1059, August.
    6. Farmer, Melissa M. & Ferraro, Kenneth F., 2005. "Are racial disparities in health conditional on socioeconomic status?," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 60(1), pages 191-204, January.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Melissa Scharoun-Lee & Penny Gordon-Larsen & Linda Adair & Barry Popkin & Jay Kaufman & Chirayath Suchindran, 2011. "Intergenerational Profiles of Socioeconomic (Dis)advantage and Obesity During the Transition to Adulthood," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 48(2), pages 625-651, May.
    2. Agovino, Massimiliano & Crociata, Alessandro & Sacco, Pier Luigi, 2019. "Proximity effects in obesity rates in the US: A Spatial Markov Chains approach," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 220(C), pages 301-311.
    3. Yuval Arbel & Chaim Fialkoff & Amichai Kerner, 2020. "The Chicken and Egg Problem: Obesity and the Urban Monocentric Model," The Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics, Springer, vol. 61(4), pages 576-606, November.
    4. Brañas-Garza, Pablo & Espín, Antonio M. & Lenkei, Balint, 2015. "BMI is not related to altruism, fairness, trust or reciprocity: Experimental evidence from the field and the lab," MPRA Paper 68184, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    5. Shaobo Jin & Fan Yang-Wallentin, 2017. "Asymptotic Robustness Study of the Polychoric Correlation Estimation," Psychometrika, Springer;The Psychometric Society, vol. 82(1), pages 67-85, March.
    6. Lisa Stolzenberg & Stewart J. D’Alessio & Jamie L. Flexon, 2019. "The Impact of Violent Crime on Obesity," Social Sciences, MDPI, vol. 8(12), pages 1-12, December.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Virginia Quick & Kaitlyn M. Eck & Colleen Delaney & Ryan Lewis & Carol Byrd-Bredbenner, 2019. "Stability of Differences in Weight-Related Characteristics of Mothers across Economic, Cultural, Social, and Environmental-Health Indicators of Socioeconomic Status," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 16(20), pages 1-15, October.
    2. Baum II, Charles L. & Ruhm, Christopher J., 2009. "Age, socioeconomic status and obesity growth," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 28(3), pages 635-648, May.
    3. Ajay Mahal & Lainie Sutton, 2014. "Economic prosperity and non-communicable disease: understanding the linkages," Chapters, in: Raghbendra Jha & Raghav Gaiha & Anil B. Deolalikar (ed.), Handbook on Food, chapter 12, pages 278-324, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    4. Melissa Scharoun-Lee & Penny Gordon-Larsen & Linda Adair & Barry Popkin & Jay Kaufman & Chirayath Suchindran, 2011. "Intergenerational Profiles of Socioeconomic (Dis)advantage and Obesity During the Transition to Adulthood," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 48(2), pages 625-651, May.
    5. Perreira, Krista M. & Telles, Edward E., 2014. "The color of health: Skin color, ethnoracial classification, and discrimination in the health of Latin Americans," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 116(C), pages 241-250.
    6. Md. Alauddin Majumder, 2013. "Does Obesity Matter for Wages? Evidence from the United States," Economic Papers, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 32(2), pages 200-217, June.
    7. Yumie Kanamori & Ayako Ide-Okochi & Tomonori Samiso, 2023. "Factors Related to Physical Activity among Older Adults Who Relocated to a New Community after the Kumamoto Earthquake: A Study from the Viewpoint of Social Capital," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 20(5), pages 1-15, February.
    8. Hoeck, Sarah & François, Guido & Van der Heyden, Johan & Geerts, Joanna & Van Hal, Guido, 2011. "Healthcare utilisation among the Belgian elderly in relation to their socio-economic status," Health Policy, Elsevier, vol. 99(2), pages 174-182, February.
    9. Hanibuchi, Tomoya & Murata, Yohei & Ichida, Yukinobu & Hirai, Hiroshi & Kawachi, Ichiro & Kondo, Katsunori, 2012. "Place-specific constructs of social capital and their possible associations to health: A Japanese case study," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 75(1), pages 225-232.
    10. Chih-Chien Huang & Scott T. Yabiku & Stephanie L. Ayers & Jennie J. Kronenfeld, 2016. "The obesity pay gap: gender, body size, and wage inequalities—a longitudinal study of Chinese adults, 1991–2011," Journal of Population Research, Springer, vol. 33(3), pages 221-242, September.
    11. Brunello, Giorgio & D'Hombres, Beatrice, 2007. "Does body weight affect wages?: Evidence from Europe," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 5(1), pages 1-19, March.
    12. Umberson, Debra & Liu, Hui & Mirowsky, John & Reczek, Corinne, 2011. "Parenthood and trajectories of change in body weight over the life course," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 73(9), pages 1323-1331.
    13. Joelle Abramowitz, 2016. "The connection between working hours and body mass index in the U.S.: a time use analysis," Review of Economics of the Household, Springer, vol. 14(1), pages 131-154, March.
    14. Masoud Vaezghasemi & Ann Öhman & Malin Eriksson & Mohammad Hakimi & Lars Weinehall & Hari Kusnanto & Nawi Ng, 2014. "The Effect of Gender and Social Capital on the Dual Burden of Malnutrition: A Multilevel Study in Indonesia," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 9(8), pages 1-10, August.
    15. Han, Euna & Norton, Edward C. & Powell, Lisa M., 2011. "Direct and indirect effects of body weight on adult wages," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 9(4), pages 381-392.
    16. Szanton, Sarah L. & Thorpe, Roland J. & Whitfield, Keith, 2010. "Life-course financial strain and health in African-Americans," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 71(2), pages 259-265, July.
    17. William Boyce & Torbjorn Torsheim & Candace Currie & Alessio Zambon, 2006. "The Family Affluence Scale as a Measure of National Wealth: Validation of an Adolescent Self-Report Measure," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 78(3), pages 473-487, September.
    18. Jaume Garcia Villar & Climent Quintana, 2005. "Body size, activity, employment and wages in Europe: A first approach," Economics Working Papers 897, Department of Economics and Business, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, revised May 2006.
    19. Martin Korndörfer & Boris Egloff & Stefan C. Schmukle, 2015. "A Large Scale Test of the Effect of Social Class on Prosocial Behavior," Working Papers 1601, Gutenberg School of Management and Economics, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz.
    20. Euna Han & Edward C. Norton & Lisa M. Powell, 2009. "Direct and Indirect Effects of Teenage Body Weight on Adult Wages," NBER Working Papers 15027, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:68:y:2009:i:4:p:708-716. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/315/description#description .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.