Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/130299 
Year of Publication: 
2015
Series/Report no.: 
IZA Discussion Papers No. 9608
Publisher: 
Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA), Bonn
Abstract: 
The increasing prevalence of obesity during pregnancy raises concerns over the intergenerational transmission of obesity and its potential to exacerbate the current obesity epidemic. The fetal origins hypothesis posits that the intrauterine environment might have lasting effects on children's outcomes. A large literature establishes that mother's pre-pregnancy obesity is correlated with obesity in her children. However, previous research is largely based on comparing individuals across families and hence cannot control for unobservable factors associated with both maternal and child obesity. We use both within-family comparisons and an instrumental variable approach on a sample of 4435 children to identify the effect of maternal pre-pregnancy obesity on obesity in preschool-aged children. Consistent with extant research, OLS models that rely on across-family comparisons indicate a significant correlation between maternal pre-pregnancy obesity and preschool obesity. However, maternal fixed effects render those associations insignificant. Instrumenting for mother's BMI with her sisters' BMI values confirms the null result indicating that the in utero transmission of obesity is likely not driving the increase in childhood obesity.
Subjects: 
preschool obesity
pre-pregnancy obesity
gestational weight gain
JEL: 
I12
J13
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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