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Background:

Obesity prevalence stabilized in the US in the first decade of the 2000s. However, obesity prevalence may resume increasing if younger generations are more sensitive to the obesogenic environment than older generations.

Methods:

We estimated cohort effects for obesity prevalence among young adults born in the 1980s. Using data collected from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey between 1971 and 2008, we calculated obesity for respondents aged between 2 and 74 years. We used the median polish approach to estimate smoothed age and period trends; residual non-linear deviations from age and period trends were regressed on cohort indicator variables to estimate birth cohort effects.

Results:

After taking into account age effects and ubiquitous secular changes, cohorts born in the 1980s had increased propensity to obesity versus those born in the late 1960s. The cohort effects …