Naval Postgraduate School, Graduate School of Business and Public Policy, Monterey, CA, USA.
Obesity (Silver Spring). 2012 Aug;20(8):1696-702. doi: 10.1038/oby.2012.84. Epub 2012 Apr 9.
This research examines whether family disruptions (i.e., divorces and separation) contribute to children's weight problems. The sample consists of 7,299 observations for 2,333 children, aged 5-14, over the 1986-2006 period, from a US representative sample from the Child and Young Adult Survey accompanying the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY). The study uses individual-fixed-effects models in a longitudinal framework to compare children's BMI and weight problems before and after a disruption. Furthermore, besides doing a before-after comparison for children, the study also estimates the effects at various periods relative to the disruption in order to examine whether children are affected before the disruption and whether any effects change as time passes from the disruption, as some effects may be temporary or slow to develop. Despite having a larger sample than the previous studies, the results provide no evidence that, on average, children's BMI and BMI percentile scores (measured with continuous outcomes) are affected before the disruption, after the disruption, and as time passes from the disruption, relative to a baseline period a few years before the disruption. However, children experiencing a family disruption do have an increased risk of obesity (having a BMI percentile score of 95 or higher) in the two years leading up to the disruption as well as after the disruption, and as time passes from the disruption.
本研究考察了家庭破裂（即离婚和分居）是否会导致儿童出现体重问题。该样本由 1986 年至 2006 年期间来自美国儿童和青年调查的全国青年纵向调查（NLSY）的代表性样本中的 7299 个观察值和 2333 个 5-14 岁的儿童组成。该研究使用个体固定效应模型在纵向框架中比较了儿童在破裂前后的 BMI 和体重问题。此外，除了对儿童进行前后比较外，该研究还估计了相对于破裂的各个时期的影响，以检查儿童是否在破裂前受到影响，以及任何影响是否随着时间的推移从破裂开始而变化，因为一些影响可能是暂时的或发展缓慢的。尽管样本量大于以前的研究，但结果并未表明，平均而言，儿童的 BMI 和 BMI 百分位分数（以连续结果衡量）在破裂前、破裂后以及从破裂开始到几年前的基线期这段时间内受到影响。然而，经历家庭破裂的儿童在破裂前两年以及破裂后和从破裂开始到几年内肥胖（BMI 百分位分数为 95 或更高）的风险增加。
