No abstract

The prevalence of overweight is higher for Hispanic children of immigrants than children of natives. This does not fit the pattern of the epidemiological paradox; the widely supported finding that immigrants tend to be healthier than their U.S.-born peers, and it suggests that exposure to the U.S. increases immigrant children’s risk of overweight. This study’s primary contribution is to better assess how exposure to the U.S. environment affects childhood overweight among a homogamous ethnic group, Mexican-Americans. We do so by using an innovative binational study design to compare the weight of Mexican-American children of immigrants, Mexican-American children of natives, and Mexican children in Mexico with different propensities of having immigrant parents. Cross-sectional data are derived from a pooled sample of 9,982 6–19 year old children living in either Mexico or the United States in the early 2000s. Mexican-resident children with a very high propensity to have immigrant parents have significantly lower percentile BMIs and lower odds of overweight than Mexican children with lower propensities of emigration and U.S.-resident Mexican-American children. This suggests that selection into immigration streams does not account for the high prevalence of overweight among children of Mexican immigrants. Rather, U.S. exposure significantly raises children of Mexican immigrants’ risk of being overweight. Moreover, second generation children have the highest percentile BMIs and greatest odds of overweight of all comparison groups, including children of natives. This suggests that they experience risks above and beyond the effects of exposure to American society.

The vast majority of American middle schools and high schools sell what is known as “competitive foods”, such as soft drinks, candy bars, and chips, to children. The relationship between consumption of sugar-sweetened drinks and snacks and childhood obesity is well established but it remains unknown whether competitive food sales in schools are related to unhealthy weight gain among children. We examined this association using data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study Kindergarten Cohort. Employing fixed effects models and a natural experimental approach, we found that children’s weight gain between 5th and 8th grades was not associated with the introduction or the duration of exposure to competitive food sales in middle school. Also, the relationship between competitive foods and weight gain did not vary significantly by gender, race/ethnicity, or family SES, and remained weak and insignificant across several alternative model specifications. One possible explanation is that children’s food preferences and dietary patterns are firmly established before adolescence. Also, middle school environments may dampen the effects of competitive food sales because they so highly structure children’s time and eating opportunities.

There are concerns about the meaning of SRH and the factors individuals consider. To illustrate how SRH is contextualized, we examine how the obesity-SRH association varies across age, periods, and cohorts. We decompose SRH into subjective and objective components and used a mechanism-based APC model approach with four decades (1970s-2000s) and five birth cohorts of NHANES data (N=26,184). Obese adults rate their health more negatively than non-obese when using overall SRH with little variation by age, period, or cohort. However, when we decomposed SRH into objective and subjective components, the obesity gap widened with increasing age in objective SRH, but narrowed in subjective SRH. Additionally, the gap narrowed for more recently-born cohorts for objective SRH, but widened for subjective SRH. The results provide indirect evidence that the relationship between obesity and SRH is socially patterned according to exposure to information about obesity and the availability of resources to manage it.

Past research on immigrant health frequently finds that the duration of time lived in the United States is associated with the erosion of immigrants' health advantages. However, the timing of U.S. migration during the life course is rarely explored. We draw from developmental and sociological perspectives to theorize how migration during childhood may be related to healthy eating among adult immigrants from Mexico. We test these ideas with a mechanism-based age-period-cohort model to disentangle age, age at arrival, and duration of residence. Results show that immigrants who arrived during preschool ages (2-5 years) and school ages (6-11 years) have less healthy diets than adult arrivals (25+ years). After accounting for age at arrival, duration of residence is positively related to healthy eating. Overall, the findings highlight the need to focus more research and policy interventions on child immigrants, who may be particularly susceptible to adopting unhealthy American behaviors during sensitive periods of childhood.