Obesity in young adulthood is related to social mobility among Swedish men

Several studies have shown an inverse relationship between obesity and social status. The aim of this longitudinal study was to disentangle the relationship between BMI and social mobility between generations.

The study population consisted of 752,081 men, born between 1951 and 1965, who were Swedish citizens at conscription examinations. Intellectual capacity and BMI (kg/m(2)) were measured at age 18 years. Childhood socioeconomic index (SEI) was measured at an approximate age of 10 years and adult SEI at age 30 years. The odds ratios of moving up, down, or being socially stable were estimated with polytomous logistic regression. Multivariate analyses controlled for childhood SEI, intellectual capacity, education, birth-year, and municipality.

Men who were obese at age 18 years had a fully adjusted odds ratio of 0.72 (0.67; 0.77) of being upwardly mobile and an odds ratio of 1.32 (1.22; 1.43) of being downwardly mobile compared to normal weight men.

Obese men in Sweden were more often downwardly mobile in the social hierarchy and less often upwardly mobile than normal weight men. BMI seems to be a determinant of the social mobility in Swedish men possibly indicating that societal factors influence the social mobility of obese men.