Over a lifetime, the medical costs associated with childhood obesity total about $19,000 per child compared with those for a child of normal weight, a new analysis shows.

The costs are about $12,900 per person for children of normal weight who become overweight or obese in adulthood, according to the analysis by researchers at the Duke Global Health Institute and Duke-NUS Graduate Medical School in Singapore and published online Monday in the journal Pediatrics.

The $19,000 estimate reflects direct medical costs such as doctors’ visits and medication but not indirect costs such as absenteeism and lost productivity into adulthood. The cost is “large, although perhaps not as large as some people would have guessed,” says lead author Eric Finkelstein, a health economist.

“In the case of childhood obesity, the real costs do not occur until decades later when these kids get adult health problems at a greater rate,” he says.

Obesity is a known risk factor for cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, certain cancers and a wide range of other diseases. About 1 in 3 adults and nearly 1 in 5 children in the United States are obese, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The estimates highlight “the financial consequences of inaction and the potential medical savings from obesity prevention efforts that successfully reduce or delay obesity onset,” Finkelstein says.

The study notes when multiplied by the number of all obese 10-year-olds in the United States today, the lifetime medical costs for this age alone reaches about $14 billion.

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