Original articleThe Association Between Body Mass Index in Adolescence and Obesity in Adulthood
Section snippets
Methods
The NLSY79 is a nationally representative sample of 12,686 young men and women who were aged 14–22 years when initially interviewed in 1979. They were interviewed annually through 1994 and biennially from 1996 to the present. Sponsored by the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the U.S. Department of Labor, the primary purpose of the NLSY79 is to collect data on the experiences of the labor force. However, the actual content of the survey covers a broad range of topics, including educational
Results
The size and characteristics of the study sample and the excluded sample are summarized in Table 1. Of the 1309 study cohort, 39% were aged 16 and 61% aged 17 years at baseline. The sample was 20% Hispanic, 28% black, and 52% white/other (classified as nonblack/non-Hispanic in the NLSY79 data). Fifty-two percent (n = 684) were males, 47% had a college degree or above by 2002, and 50% had a family income above $20,000 in 1981. At age 16/17 years, 11% of the cohort had a BMI ≥85th percentile and
Discussion
The present study fills a void in the current literature by using recent data (from 2002) to determine risk for adult obesity among males and females who were aged 16–17 years in 1981. As we expected, youth who were classified as high risk (in this case, at the 85th percentile or higher in terms of BMI) were at significantly greater risk for obesity as adults than were their counterparts who were not considered high risk. When we examined youth whose BMI was at the 95th percentile or higher, we
Acknowledgments
The findings and conclusions in this report are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the views of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
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