Tuesday, July 24, 2007

Obese girls less likely to attend college

This is an appropriate follow-up to I bet this will cause a stir.

UT study: Obese girls less likely to attend college

A study being released today by a University of Texas researcher shows that obese girls are half as likely to attend college as peers with healthier weights.

"Obesity predicts college enrollment even when I compare girls only to other girls with the same race," Crosnoe said. "This effect is slightly stronger for black and Hispanic girls than for whites, but it exists for all three groups."



It is a bit ironic that mothers are working to move their family into the middle class. The resulting obesity problems will bar many of those children from the middle class as they become adults.


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2 comments:

Anonymous said...

It makes me wonder if the relationship is really causal. It seems like a rather odd predictor to me, but maybe it's because I was borderline overweight (in the 'medical' sense) when I went off to college, and definitely so when I transferred to UT.

Perhaps the same emotional/psychological factors that contribute to obesity also contribute to low academic achievement? That would make more sense to me.

Janine Cate said...

However, the study looked at obese girls which is more than a little overweight.

I was overweight in highschool, but lost about 35 pounds between my senior year and first year of college.

I went to college to get as far away from the kids I knew in highschool. I picked a school out of state just for that reason. If attending college near my hometown was the only option, I don't know what I would have done.