Gender and Health Behavior Clustering among U.S. Young Adults

ABSTRACT

U.S. trends in population health suggest alarming disparities among young adults, who are less healthy across most measureable domains than their counterparts in other high-income countries; these international comparisons are particularly troubling for women. To deepen our understanding of gender disparities in health and underlying behavioral contributions, we document gender-specific clusters of health behavior among U.S. young adults using nationally representative data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health. We find high levels of poor health behavior, but especially among men; 40 percent of men clustered into a group characterized by unhealthy behavior (e.g., poor diet, no exercise, substance use), compared to only 22 percent of women. Additionally, women tend to age out of unhealthy behaviors in young adulthood more than men. Further, we uncover gender differences in the extent to which sociodemographic position and adolescent contexts inform health behavior clustering. For example, college education was more protective for men, whereas marital status was equally protective across gender. Parental drinking mattered for health behavior clustering among men, whereas peer drinking mattered for clustering among women. We discuss these results in the context of declining female advantage in U.S. health and changing young adult social and health contexts.

Acknowledgments

This research uses data from Add Health, a program project directed by Kathleen Mullan Harris and designed by J. Richard Udry, Peter S. Bearman, and Kathleen Mullan Harris at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and funded by grant P01-HD31921 from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, with cooperative funding from 23 other federal agencies and foundations. Special acknowledgment is due to Ronald R. Rindfuss and Barbara Entwisle for assistance in the original design. Information on how to obtain the Add Health data files is available on the Add Health website (http://www.cpc.unc.edu/addhealth).

Funding

The authors acknowledge generous research support from the National Institute on Aging–supported Network on Life Course Health Dynamics and Disparities in 21st Century America (R24AG045061), center grant support from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development to the Population Research Center at the University of Texas at Austin (R24 HD042849) and to the Carolina Population Center (P2C HD050924), and training grant support (5 T32 HD007081, Training Program in Population Studies) awarded to the Population Research Center at The University of Texas at Austin by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.

Additional information

Funding

The authors acknowledge generous research support from the National Institute on Aging–supported Network on Life Course Health Dynamics and Disparities in 21st Century America (R24AG045061), center grant support from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development to the Population Research Center at the University of Texas at Austin (R24 HD042849) and to the Carolina Population Center (P2C HD050924), and training grant support (5 T32 HD007081, Training Program in Population Studies) awarded to the Population Research Center at The University of Texas at Austin by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.