Is the intergenerational transmission of overweight 'gender assortative'?

Using almost two decades worth of data from the Health Survey for England, that contain representative records of clinically measured weight and height, this paper studies whether parents and children's overweight (including obesity) is 'gender assortative'. Our findings suggest that the intergenerational transmission of parent's overweight differs by children's sex and is statistically different for fathers and mothers. Gender assortative overweight is stronger among pre-school age and school-aged children. The parent-child associations are large and precisely estimated, heterogeneous by children's age and sex and stronger among white children and children of older parents. These results suggest there is a gender assortative intergenerational association of overweight.

Gender-assortative waist circumference in mother-daughter and father-son pairs, and its implications. An 11-year longitudinal study in children (EarlyBird 59).

BACKGROUND/OBJECTIVES: Body mass index (BMI) is reportedly gender assortative (mother-daughter, father-son) in contemporary children. We investigated the corresponding transmission of waist circumference (WC) and its implications. METHODS: We measured parental WC at baseline and WC, height, weight and para-umbilical skin-fold (USF) annually in their offspring from 5 to 15 years (n = 223 trios). Parents were deemed normal metabolic risk (NR) or high risk (HR) according to World Health Organization (WHO) cut-points for WC (mothers 80 cm, fathers 94 cm). The residual from WC adjusted for BMI (WC|BMI ) was used as a surrogate for excess intra-abdominal fat, and its association with insulin resistance (HOMA2-IR) was sought. RESULTS: WC and USF were both gender assortative, while WC|BMI was not. WC was greater by 1.62 cm (P < 0.05, confidence interval [CI]: 0.09-3.16) and USF by 0.37 cm (P < 0.01, CI: 0.19-0.56) among the daughters (but not the sons) of HR compared with those of NR mothers, and by 1.32 cm (P < 0.05, CI: 0.09-2.55) and 0.18 cm (P < 0.05, CI: 0.04-0.32), respectively in the corresponding father-son (but not father-daughter) pairings. No such differences could be demonstrated for WC|BMI . A standard deviation score 1(SDS) change in WC|BMI , independent of BMI, was associated with a 7.14% change in IR in girls (P < 0.01, CI: 1.76-12.80) and 8.02% in boys (P < 0.001, CI: 2.93-13.36), but there was no relationship between IR and USF. CONCLUSION: The relationship of offspring WC to metabolic health and to parental size is complex. Subcutaneous abdominal fat is gender assortative but harmless, while intra-abdominal fat (its surrogate in this analysis) is unrelated to parental waist circumference, but metabolically harmful.