Factors Associated with Overweight and Obesity among Children of Mexican Descent: Results of a Binational Study

The prevalence of childhood obesity is high among young children of Mexican origin in the United States, however, the determinants are poorly understood. We conducted a binational study with a sample from California (CA) and Mexico (MX), to identify and compare the most important factors associated with overweight and obesity among children of Mexican descent. Significantly more children were classified as overweight or obese in CA compared to MX (53.3 vs. 14.9%, P < 0.01). In CA and MX, having an obese mother was significantly associated with being overweight or obese. In MX, male gender, high socioeconomic status and very low food insecurity were associated with being overweight or obese. These data offer hypotheses for how migration may influence the high prevalence of overweight among the Mexican children in California.

• Publication year

  2010

• Venue

  Journal of Immigrant and Minority Health

• Publication date

  2010-03-09

• Fields of study

  Medicine, Sociology

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.1007/s10903-010-9332-xPMID 20217234PMCID 2953610
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar, PubMed

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

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