The Obesity Pandemic in the Developing World

Janine Huisman , Radboud University Nijmegen
Jeroen Smits , Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen

In wealthy countries obesity has been a public health issue for decades. Once considered a problem of developed countries, it is now increasingly becoming a problem in less developed countries as well, especially in urban areas. Given the substantial health risks and economic costs associated with obesity, it is of great importance to gain understanding of the determinants of this problem. In this paper we look at these factors for sub-Saharan Africa, one of the least developed parts of the world, where overweight and obesity are growing quickly. For this paper we use data from the Global Data Lab (www.globaldatalab.org) for 275,000 women aged 15-49 from 370 sub-national regions (districts) in 35 sub-Saharan African countries. This makes it possible to establish the differences in size of the problem between ánd within African countries and to get a better understanding of the determinants behind the rising obesity levels. Our dependent variable is the Body Mass Index (BMI) of women aged 15-49. Our main independent variables are at the individual level (age, education, urban area, wealth) and sub-national level (level of development of the district, percentage of households with internet in the district and percentage of women with paid employment in the district). To determine how the effect of the various individual factors differ according to the circumstances in which the women live, we also include interactions between our individual and contact characteristics.

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 Presented in Session P1. Postercafe