In this work, we use two large epidemiological samples representative of the non-institutionalized adult population of the United States to examine secular trends in the association between familial risk for alcoholism and obesity. We find a significant association between familial alcoholism and obesity among men and women surveyed in 2001–02. Furthermore, this association was substantially greater in 2001–02 than in 1991–92 among women, with a qualitatively similar, but less pronounced trend among men (p=0.05) in bivariate analyses. For men, the association between familial alcohol problems and obesity in 2001–02 is smaller than for women, but statistically significant. For women, both the association and the secular trend remain significant after adjustment for other sociodemographic variables, smoking, alcohol consumption, alcohol and drug dependence and major depression. For men, the secular trend is non-significant after adjustment for covariates.
