When mom and dad get laid off, the kids start to put on the pounds.

That’s according to a new study of public school children in California conducted by researchers from Johns Hopkins University. The study looked at the weights of 1.7 million students during the 2008-2012 recession, and identified an average 4 percent risk of becoming overweight among them.

The study charted the percentage of students ages 7 to 18 years of age who were overweight during that time. The percentage rose from 28 percent in 2008 to 40 percent a year later. By 2012, the percent was down to 37 percent — still nearly 10 percentage points higher than prior to the recession.

By then charting unemployment in each California county, and comparing it to the students who were overweight in those counties, the researchers concluded that there was a 4 percent increased risk of becoming overweight as unemployment rose.

Because the study was based strictly on statistics with no participant input, the research team had no anecdotal data on what changes lead to the weight gain. But several diet-related factors were likely involved, posited study senior author Jessica Jones-Smith, an assistant professor in the Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins.

Families may have switched to cheaper, less healthy foods, and school districts, also hit hard by the recession, may have done the same.

"The stuff that is convenient and tasty is also high in calories and may be the kind of food people turn to in these economically constrained times," Jones-Smith said.

The study was published in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health in June.

Instant Insights /

Child obesity and unemployment could be linked, study shows

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