American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, Vol 50, 740-745, Copyright © 1989 by The American Society for Clinical Nutrition, Inc

ORIGINAL RESEARCH COMMUNICATIONS

Educational level, fatness, and fatness differences between husbands and wives

SM Garn, TV Sullivan and VM Hawthorne
Center for Human Growth and Development, School of Public Health, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor 48109-0406.

In 1017 husband-wife pairs aged 20-49 y, both fatness and weight of the wives is inversely and linearly related to educational level whereas the husbands' summed skinfold measurements bear a curvilinear, parabolic relationship to years of schooling. Overall, fatness differences between husbands and wives diminish with increased education, and beyond 13 y of education husbands often exceed the subcutaneous fat thickness of their wives. When the education of one spouse is held constant at 9-12 y, women who marry up to men of greater education are systematically leaner and women who mary down are both fatter and heavier. These findings in spouse pairs sharing a common family income suggest that assortative mating with respect to educational level accounts for much of the socioeconomic effect in fatness including the fatness differences between women who marry down and those who marry up. These data also demonstrate that women are not fatter than men at all socioeconomic levels.

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