Abstract: Objective To examine whether exposure to the Chinese famine during fetal life or early childhood is associated with the risk of metabolic syndrome(MS) in adulthood. Methods A data of 2 854 adults born between 1956 and 1964 from the 2011 Chinese Health and Retirement Longitudinal Survey (CHARLS) was used.Three groups were defined as pre-famine(born in 1956-1958),famine exposure(born in 1959-1961) and non-exposed group(post-famine,born in 1962-1964). The Chinese Diabetes Society(CDS) criteria were used for the definition of metabolic syndrome. Difference in difference model(DID) and disease risk score(DRS) matching approach based on conditional logistic regression were utilized to adjust the effects of age and other potential confounders. Results The prevalence of MS were 16.00%,16.47% and 14.86% among participants of pre-famine,famine and post-famine groups respectively. But after adjusting covariates by DRS matching,the interactions in the DID models were not significant(all P>0.05),meaning the odds ratio (OR) was not significantly bigger than one and that the two famine exposed groups of participants didn't have a significantly higher risk of developing metabolic syndrome. Conclusions There is no significant evidence in our study to support that famine exposure in early life will increase the risk of MS in adulthood. Further studies with larger sample size are needed to confirm the hypothesis.