Citation
Gutin, Iliya (2018). Do you consider your weight healthy? The association between perceived weight throughout early life and self-rated health in adulthood.
Annual Meeting of the Population Association of America. Denver, CO.
Abstract
Obesity and weight gain pose a growing threat to the health and wellbeing of ever-younger US adults. Nevertheless, young adult views of body weight as a salient component of overall health are poorly understood, especially prior to the onset of weight-related morbidities. Addressing this issue, I use Add Health and group-based trajectory models to examine how perceptions of weight throughout early life are associated with self-rated health (SRH) in adulthood, above and beyond objective weight and other confounders. Results show that adults who perceived themselves as “overweight” – in adolescence, young adulthood, or always – are twice as likely to report fair/poor SRH as individuals consistently perceiving their weight as “about right”. These findings provide insight into the nuances of how adults define health as a function of weight. Moreover, they emphasize the importance of subjectivity in evaluating health and how perceptions of weight become internalized throughout the life course.
URL
https://paa.confex.com/paa/2018/webprogrampreliminary/Paper19093.htmlKeyword(s)
obesity perceived weight self-rated health
Reference Type
Conference proceeding
Book Title
Annual Meeting of the Population Association of America
Series Title
Children and youth
Author(s)
Gutin, Iliya
Year Published
2018
City of Publication
Denver, CO
Reference ID
9287