Prosperity portends diabetes in the South.

• Position: Medicine & Health - Southern United States - Brief article

The strikingly high prevalence of Type 2 diabetes in the American South can be traced (at least in part) to rapid economic growth between 1950-80, suggests a study published in the American Journal of Human Biology, which cites the "thrifty phenotype" hypothesis--if economic conditions present during fetal development improve dramatically during a person's childhood, the prospects of poor health in adulthood increase.

According to the hypothesis, children whose parents endured being poor were unprepared biologically to manage the riches of processed foods and the more sedentary life that accompanies higher incomes. The resulting obesity leads to a high risk for multiple diseases.

In the South, and particularly for African-Americans, poverty was rampant for several generations until industrialization took hold in the 1950s and 1960s, leading to rapid economic growth. The benefits of prosperity and the...