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 (BMI30 kg/m2) and class 2 obesity (BMI35 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.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
Publisher Info
Paper provided by Universitat de Barcelona. Espai de Recerca en Economia in its series Working Papers in Economics with number
205.
Length: 0 pages Date of creation: 2008 Date of revision: Handle: RePEc:bar:bedcje:2008205
Contact details of provider: Postal: Espai de Recerca en Economia, Facultat de Ciències Econòmiques. Tinent Coronel Valenzuela, Num 1-11 08034 Barcelona. Spain. Web page: http://www.ere.ub.es More information through EDIRC
For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its listing, contact: (Espai de Recerca en Economia).
Related research
Keywords:
Find related papers by JEL classification: I19 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Other I18 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Government Policy; Regulation; Public Health I12 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Health Production
This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:
References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.: