The Effect of School on Overweight in Childhood: Gain in Body Mass Index During the School Year and During Summer Vacation
Paul T. von Hippel, PhD,
Brian Powell, PhD,
Douglas B. Downey, PhD and
Nicholas J. Rowland, MA
Paul T. von Hippel is with the Department of Sociology and the Initiative for Population Research, Ohio State University, Columbus. Brian Powell is with the Department of Sociology, Indiana University, Bloomington. Douglas B. Downey is with the Department of Sociology, Ohio State University, Columbus. Nicholas J. Rowland is a doctoral student in the Department of Sociology at Indiana University, Bloomington.
FIGURE 1——Expected body mass index (BMI) changes among children of average weight and among children who were overweight at the beginning of kindergarten: Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Cohort, 1998–2000.
Note. The threshold for overweight is the 95th percentile on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s BMI-for-age charts, which show the BMI distributions that prevailed before recent increases in overweight.4 At the age of 5.5 years—the average age at the beginning of kindergarten—the 95th BMI percentiles are 18.1 for boys and 18.5 for girls; in the graph, these values are averaged to give an initial BMI of 18.3. The trajectories shown can be calculated with the estimates in Table 1 (calculations are available from the authors).
FIGURE 2——Race/ethnicity-specific average body mass index (BMI) growth among children who were comparable on other variables: Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Cohort, 1998–2000.
(calculations are available from the authors).