Adolescents’ risk of obesity goes up if they are raised by their grandparents

In an article published this month in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, authors Mathews and Nadorff noted the increasing number of grandparent-headed households in the United States. They also pointed out that more and more children are experiencing chronic health problems, including obesity. To see if one contributes to the other, the authors conducted “the first study of its kind to compare nutritional intake, food security, and BMI among children raised by their grandparents, those in a multi-generational home, and those raised solely by their parents.” This was accomplished by conducting a secondary analysis of data from a nationally representative sample of adolescents, which contains their BMI scores and information about their nutritional intake, food security, and socioeconomic status. This sample came from the Health Behavior in School-Aged Children (HBSC), 2009-2010 (ICPSR 34792), one study in a series of cross-national, school-based, independent national surveys of school-aged children in more than 40 participating countries. The sample analyzed by the authors included just over 12,000 US students, from nearly 11,000 families that had only parents present in the household, 238 families with only grandparents present, and just over 1,100 multi-generational families. Mathews and Nadorff  found that “adolescents living with grandparents are at risk for poorer dietary behaviors, food insecurity as well as higher BMI.” Hunger was reported more often in multi-generational households. In addition to the HBSC study used in this article, the National Addiction & HIV Data Archive Program distributes the previous United States studies in the HBSC series. See the series home page for links to other publications that use HBSC data.