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Decomposing The Intergenerational Disparity In Income And Obesity, Qi Zhang, Buhong Zheng, Ning Zhang, Youfa Wang

Community & Environmental Health Faculty Publications

Intergenerational disparity in income and health violates the norm of equal opportunity and deserves the attention of researchers and policy makers. To understand changes in intergenerational disparity, we created the intergenerational mobility index (IMI), which can simultaneously measure changes in income rankings and in health outcomes across two generations. We selected obesity as one health outcome to illustrate the application of IMI due to its severe health and financial consequences for society and the significant changes in the distribution of obesity across income groups. Although obesity has increased in all income groups in the last four decades, higher income groups …