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Author: Wall, Ian F.
Resulting in 1 citation.
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Wall, Ian F. |
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Embodied Disadvantage and Socioeconomic Stratification: Parental Body Mass and Offspring Income in the United States Presented: San Francisco CA, American Sociological Association Annual Meeting, August 2014 Cohort(s): NLSY97 Publisher: American Sociological Association Keyword(s): Body Mass Index (BMI); Income; Obesity; Parental Influences; Socioeconomic Status (SES) Permission to reprint the abstract has not been received from the publisher. Sociologists have a long-standing interest in the social factors that influence life chances and how these factors may have lingering effects over generations, yet intergenerational studies often overlook the role of embodied factors. Well-established relationships in medical and social science literatures justify an investigation of body mass as one such embodied factor. Specifically, body mass is strongly related to socioeconomic position, in an inverse direction; parental body mass is highly correlated with the body mass of their offspring; and higher offspring body mass can negatively influence socioeconomic attainment. I take this series of associations to be a plausible mechanism connecting parental body mass and offspring income, and here I examine this overarching association net of traditional measures of social origin and individual-level controls, using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, 1997 cohort. Multiple regression analyses suggest that, on average, above-normal parental body mass (BMI≥25) is negatively associated with offspring income in early adulthood, especially for whites. In one analysis, white men with two obese parents (BMI≥30) make an average of ~$8,570 (SE $2,410) less per year than white men with two normal weight parents, net of controls. In the same analysis, having two obese parents is a larger income disadvantage than being black compared to white [$6,580 (SE $1,560)] or being female compared to male [$8,410 (SE $1,330)]. Given that socioeconomic characteristics have strong influences on one’s body mass, I argue that body mass may play a role in the intergenerational transmission of socioeconomic position. |
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Bibliography Citation
Wall, Ian F. "Embodied Disadvantage and Socioeconomic Stratification: Parental Body Mass and Offspring Income in the United States." Presented: San Francisco CA, American Sociological Association Annual Meeting, August 2014. |