| Titre : | Decomposing Cross-Country Gaps in Obesity and Overweight: Does the Social Environment Matter? |
| Titre original: | Analyse des différences de niveau d'obésité et de surpoids entre les pays : l'environnement a-t-il une influence ? |
| Partie : | Documents de Treball de la Facultat de Cincies Economiques i Empresarials |
| Auteurs : | J. COSTA-FONT ; D. FABBRI ; J. GIL ; Universitat de Barcelona. Department d'Econometria |
| Type de document : | Document de travail |
| Editeur : | Barcelone : Universitat de Barcelona, 2008 |
| Collection : | Collecció d?Economia, num. E08/205 |
| Format : | 33p., tabl., ann. |
| Note générale : | Référence : réf. bibl. |
| Langues: | Anglais |
| Catégories : |
[BDSP5] Démographie > Population > Age [BDSP5] Démographie > Population > Sexe > Femme [BDSP5] Démographie > Population > Sexe > Homme [BDSP5] Etudes méthodes et statistiques [NI] > Méthodologie > Processus > Evolution [BDSP5] Géographie politique > Monde > Europe > Espagne [BDSP5] Géographie politique > Monde > Europe > Italie [BDSP5] Information & communication [NI] > Information > Nature information [NI] > Etude > Etude comparée [BDSP5] Pathologie > Maladie nutrition > Obésité [BDSP5] Pratique santé [NI] > Comportement alimentaire [BDSP5] Pratique santé [NI] > Comportement alimentaire > Habitude alimentaire [BDSP5] Pratique santé [NI] > Comportement santé [BDSP5] Sociologie > Société > Vie sociale > Vie quotidienne > Loisir > Activité physique [BDSP5] Symptôme > Surcharge pondérale [BDSP5] Système éducatif > Niveau enseignement [BDSP5] Travail |
| Résumé : | A key question underpinning health production, and one that remains relatively unexplored, is the influence of socio-economic and environmental factors on weight gain and obesity. Such issues acquire particular relevance when data from two Mediterranean countries (Italy and Spain) are compared. Interestingly, the obesity rate was 5 percentage points higher in Spain in 2003 while in 1990 it had been roughly the same in the two countries. This paper reports a non-linear decomposition of gaps in overweight (body mass index ? BMI - between 25 and 29.9 kg/m2), class 1 (BMI=30 kg/m2) and class 2 obesity (BMI=35 kg/m2) between Spain and Italy by both gender and age. We isolate the influence of lifestyles, socioeconomic and environmental effects in explaining cross-country gaps in the prevalence of obesity. Our findings suggest that when the social environment (peer effects) is not controlled for, eating habits and education are the main predictors of total cross-country gaps (36-52%), albeit that these two factors have a different impact depending on gender and age. Somewhat paradoxically, however, when we controlled for the social environment, these previous predictors lost their explanatory power and peer effects were found to explain between 46 and 76% of gaps and to exhibit an increasing age pattern. |
| En ligne : | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bar:bedcje:2008205&r=hea |