2010 by World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd. All rights reserved. An increasing literature examines the association between restricted fetal or early childhood growth and the incidence of diseases in adulthood. Using the China Health and Nutrition Survey, we assess the impact of nutritional deficiency in the early lives of survivors of the Chinese Great Famine on overweight in adulthood by comparing the famine cohort and non-famine cohorts as well as severe famine regions and elsewhere. The relation is found to be sex-specific. The effect appears to be more pronounced in women than in men.
