Table 1.

Measures used in lagged dependent variable analysis

Variable	Description
MEASURES OF HEALTH USED IN LAGGED DEPENDENT VARIABLE ANALYSIS
Physical Health
BMI	Continuous measure of raw BMI measured as body weight in kilograms/height in meters squared. Height and weight measures were self-reported at WI and measured by trained interviewers at WIII (Range: 11.21-64.56).
Poor self-reported health	Ordinal measure of self reported health at WI where: 5 is poor, 4 is fair, 3 is good, 2 is very good and 1 is excellent.
Mental Health
Depression index	Ordinal measure of sum of responses to 3 questions: How often was each of the following true during the past week: (1) You felt depressed, (2) You felt sad, (3) You felt like you could not shake off the blues, even with help from your family and friends (Range: 0-9).
Risk Behaviors
Binge drinking episodes	Self-reported number of episodes of binge drinking (5 or more drink on one occasion) during the past year (range: 0-365).
Cigarettes smoked per day	Self reported number of cigarettes smoked per day in the past 30 days (Range: 0-95).
Marijuana Usage	Self reported number of times marijuana used in the past 30 days (Range: 0-999).
Lack of Physical Activity	Ordinal measure of bouts of physical activity, reverse coded so that higher numbers indicate lower levels of physical activity (Range: 0-18).
Composite Health Measure	Ordinal measure of sum of binary versions of health indicators above (Range: 0-7). Poor health binary measures are constructed in the following way: 1) obese defined by International Obesity Task Force (IOTF) definitions; 2) reported fair or poor health; 3) depression index score>3; 4) reported 5 or more drinks on one occasion in past year; 5) reported smoking at least 1 whole cigarette daily in last 30 days; 6) reported using marijuana at least one time in last 30 days; and 7) bouts of physical activity <5.
MEASURES OF SOCIOECONOMIC STATUS AND CONTROLS
Individual Level Controls
Low family SES at WI	Sum of responses to 3 binary items at WI: (1) 1 no 2 bio parents, (2) poverty/welfare and (3) parent education HS or less (Range:0-3) Categorical measure indicating religiosity index score is less than 1.5. Religiosity is measured as an index that represents the average response to three questions: 1) Church attendance (ranging from 4 for never attend to 1 for attend once a week or more) 2) The importance of religion (ranges from 4 for not important at all 1 for very important) 3) The frequency of prayer (ranges from 5 for never to 1 for at least once a day).
Low religiosity at WI	We rescale and reverse code responses to range from 0 to 3 rather than 1 to 4 to be more consistent with answer choices. Those who are missing on religion are given a value of -1 on each of these measures.
Non-marital birth	First birth reported prior to first marriage (females only measure)
Birth between WI and WIII	Birth reported between WI and WIII
Ever cohabited between WI and WIII	Report of living with a romantic partner in a nonmarital union between WI and WIII
Age at WI	Continuous measure of self-reported age in years at WI (Range: 11-21)
Peer Level SES
High % parent HS or less: peer	Proportion of respondent's peers whose highest educated parent completed high school (or GED) or less is greater than 56%
High % single parent: peer	Proportion of respondent's peers living in a single parent household is greater than 20%
No friendship Information	Respondent either reported no school friends or information on reported friends was not available
School Level SES
High % parent HS or less: school	Categorical measure indicating the proportion of students in a respondent's school whose highest educated parent completed high school (or GED) or less is greater than 53%
High % single parent: school	Categorical measure indicating the proportion of students in a respondent's school living in a single parent household is greater than 23.5%
Neighborhood Level SES
High % parent less than HS: neighborhood	Categorical measure indicating the proportion of individuals 25 years or older in a respondent's neighborhood who completed less than a high school (or GED) is greater than 34% (Census tract level measure)
High % female headed household: neighborhood	Categorical measure indicating the proportion of female-headed households in a respondent's neighborhood is greater than 7.5% (Census tract level measure)
Low racial heterogeneity	Categorical measure indicating level of racial dispersion in a respondent's neighborhood is less than or equal to .05 (i.e., homogeneity of one racial group). The dispersion measures are based on the following formula: D~=~{k(N^2- E f SUB i^2)} OVER{ N SUP 2(k-1)} where k is the number of categories, N2 is the sum of all categories squared, and ‘fi2 is the sum of squared category frequencies over all i (=1, ..., k) groups. If D = 0, then only one category is nonzero; if D = 1, all category frequencies are equal.
Urban tract	Categorical measure to designate if respondent lives in an urbanized area