Does obesity breed obesity? A 2007 study out of Harvard University found that hanging out with fat people increase your chances of being fat. Now, based on the result of that study comes a new study from the Harvard-Massachusetts Institute of Technology Division of Health Sciences and Technology predicting obesity rates in the U.S. will slowly climb for another 40 years, at which point 42 percent of the population will be obese. Not just overweight, but obese. That finding contradicts previous predictions that the obesity rate has topped at its current rate of 32 percent of the U.S. population.