China's one-child policy and overweight children in the 1990s

The prevalence of overweight children in China has increased, and the one-child policy has been suggested as a cause. Drawing on longitudinal data from the China Health and Nutrition Survey, this paper investigates the relationship between the one-child policy and overweight among young children. The policy is measured directly as local variations and indirectly as sibship composition (i.e., number of siblings, birth order and birth interval). Results suggest that overweight among preschoolers and primary school children increased in the 1990s at a slower pace than that documented in previous studies in China, and the prevalence of overweight varies by age of children and urban residence. However, while there are substantially gross differences in overweight by policy variations and sibsize (i.e., number of siblings), single children and those in strict one-child policy communities do not differ from other children, after adjusting for household and community characteristics. Thus, the policy does not seem to bear an independent relationship to child overweight risk. Hence, this analysis provides little to support the public perception that the one-child policy is associated with the rising epidemic of child overweight in transitional China. Rather the risk associated with overweight include age of children, parental body mass index (BMI), level of maternal education, local socioeconomic development, urban residence and province/region.