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The education of one spouse and the fatness of the other spouse
Author(s) -
Garn Stanley M.,
Sullivan Timothy V.,
Hawthorne Victor M.
Publication year - 1989
Publication title -
american journal of human biology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.559
H-Index - 81
eISSN - 1520-6300
pISSN - 1042-0533
DOI - 10.1002/ajhb.1310010302
Subject(s) - spouse , socioeconomic status , assortative mating , demography , educational attainment , psychology , gerontology , medicine , sociology , population , economics , anthropology , economic growth
As shown in 702 wives with 9–12 years of education and 612 husbands similarly educated, the summed skinfolds of one spouse are influenced by the educational level of the other spouse, considerably so for the husbands. Women with 9–12 years of education married to men of lower educational attainment are higher in the sum of four skinfolds while women of similar years of schooling married to men of college education and beyond are leaner ( P =0.001). Possible explanations for the effect of the education of one spouse on the fatness level of the other spouse include selective mating in the direction set by the husband's socioeconomic milieu and fatness “drift” on the part of the wives, again in the direction of the husband's socioeconomic status (SES). While these findings do not lend themselves to a simple biological explanation, they do reiterate the effects of socioeconomic variables on fatness level within populations and even within families.