Childhood obesity may be quietly undermining one of the central promises of American life.
A study by a Rutgers researcher has found that children who are obese are far less likely to climb the economic ladder as adults, raising concerns that a rising health problem also could deny many young Americans the chance to achieve the American dream.
“Childhood obesity isn’t just a health crisis,” said Yanhong Jin, a professor with the Department of Agricultural, Food and Resource Economics at the Rutgers School of Environmental and Biological Sciences and a coauthor of the study. “It is an economic mobility crisis.”
The research, published in the Journal of Population Economics, examined how childhood obesity affects intergenerational mobility, which measures whether children grow up to earn more than their…