IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/zbw/hohdps/242018.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Obesity inequality and the changing shape of the bodyweight distribution in China

Author

Listed:
  • Nie, Peng
  • Ding, Lanlin
  • Sousa-Poza, Alfonso

Abstract

Using data from the China Health and Nutrition Survey (CHNS), this study analyses changes in bodyweight (BMI and waist circumference) distributions between 1991 and 2011 among adults aged 20+ in China. To do so, we quantify the source and extent of temporal changes in bodyweight and then decompose the increase in obesity prevalence into two components: a rightward shift of the bodyweight distribution (mean growth) and a (re)distributional skewing. Our analysis reveals a clear rightward distributional shift combined with a leftward skewing. Although the relatively large size of this skewing in the first decade analysed reflects an increase in obesity inequality, this inequality growth subsides in the second decade. Nevertheless, over the entire 20-year period, obesity inequality increases significantly, especially among females, younger age groups, rural residents and individuals with low socioeconomic status.

Suggested Citation

  • Nie, Peng & Ding, Lanlin & Sousa-Poza, Alfonso, 2018. "Obesity inequality and the changing shape of the bodyweight distribution in China," Hohenheim Discussion Papers in Business, Economics and Social Sciences 24-2018, University of Hohenheim, Faculty of Business, Economics and Social Sciences.
    • Handle: RePEc:zbw:hohdps:242018
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/183240/1/dp-24-2018.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Frank A. Cowell & Emmanuel Flachaire, 2014. "Statistical Methods for Distributional Analysis," Working Papers halshs-01115996, HAL.
    2. Russell Davidson & Jean-Yves Duclos, 2013. "Testing for Restricted Stochastic Dominance," Econometric Reviews, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 32(1), pages 84-125, January.
    3. Marina Selini Katsaiti, 2012. "Obesity and happiness," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 44(31), pages 4101-4114, November.
    4. Stephen P. Jenkins & Philippe Van Kerm, 2000. "Generalized Lorenz curves and related graphs," Stata Technical Bulletin, StataCorp LP, vol. 9(49).
    5. Shorrocks, Anthony F, 1984. "Inequality Decomposition by Population Subgroups," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 52(6), pages 1369-1385, November.
    6. Luc Christiaensen & Lionel Demery & Stefano Paternostro, 2002. "Growth, Distribution, and Poverty in Africa : Messages from the 1990s," World Bank Publications - Books, The World Bank Group, number 15215, December.
    7. Yitzhaki, Shlomo, 1983. "On an Extension of the Gini Inequality Index," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 24(3), pages 617-628, October.
    8. L. R. Jain & Suresh D. Tendulkar, 1990. "Role of Growth and Distribution in the Observed Change in Headcount Ratio Measure of Poverty: A Decomposition Exercise for India," Indian Economic Review, Department of Economics, Delhi School of Economics, vol. 25(2), pages 165-205, July.
    9. Burkhauser, Richard V. & Cawley, John, 2008. "Beyond BMI: The value of more accurate measures of fatness and obesity in social science research," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 27(2), pages 519-529, March.
    10. Nie, Peng & Ding, Lanlin & Sousa-Poza, Alfonso, 2019. "Decomposing adult obesity trends in China (1991–2011)," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 34(C), pages 5-15.
    11. Datt, Gaurav & Ravallion, Martin, 1992. "Growth and redistribution components of changes in poverty measures : A decomposition with applications to Brazil and India in the 1980s," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 38(2), pages 275-295, April.
    12. Dennis Tao Yang, 1999. "Urban-Biased Policies and Rising Income Inequality in China," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 89(2), pages 306-310, May.
    13. David G. Blanchflower & Andrew J. Oswald & Bert Van Landeghem, 2009. "Imitative Obesity and Relative Utility," Journal of the European Economic Association, MIT Press, vol. 7(2-3), pages 528-538, 04-05.
    14. Paul Contoyannis & John Wildman, 2007. "Using relative distributions to investigate the body mass index in England and Canada," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 16(9), pages 929-944, September.
    15. Cawley, John (ed.), 2011. "The Oxford Handbook of the Social Science of Obesity," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780199736362.
    16. David Sahn, 2009. "Weights on the rise: where and for whom?," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 7(4), pages 351-370, December.
    17. Nie, Peng & Sousa-Poza, Alfonso & He, Xiaobo, 2015. "Peer effects on childhood and adolescent obesity in China," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 35(C), pages 47-69.
    18. Shatakshee Dhongde, 2007. "Measuring the Impact of Growth and Income Distribution on Poverty in India," Journal of Income Distribution, Ad libros publications inc., vol. 16(2), pages 25-48, June.
    19. David Sahn & Stephen Younger, 2005. "Improvements in children’s health: Does inequality matter?," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 3(2), pages 125-143, August.
    20. Zhangbin Yu & Shuping Han & Jiahui Chu & Zhongya Xu & Chun Zhu & Xirong Guo, 2012. "Trends in Overweight and Obesity among Children and Adolescents in China from 1981 to 2010: A Meta-Analysis," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 7(12), pages 1-14, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Vijayasivajie, Anushiya & Mukhopadhaya, Pundarik & Heaton, Chris, 2023. "An investigation of body mass distributional changes in Australia, 1995–2017/18," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 50(C).
    2. David E. Bloom & Victoria Y. Fan & Vadim Kufenko & Osondu Ogbuoji & Klaus Prettner & Gavin Yamey, 2021. "Going beyond GDP with a parsimonious indicator: inequality-adjusted healthy lifetime income," Vienna Yearbook of Population Research, Vienna Institute of Demography (VID) of the Austrian Academy of Sciences in Vienna, vol. 19(1), pages 127-140.
    3. Lanlin Ding & Andrew M. Jones & Peng Nie, 2022. "Ex ante Inequality of Opportunity in Health among the Elderly in China: A Distributional Decomposition Analysis of Biomarkers," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 68(4), pages 922-950, December.
    4. Nie, Peng & Ding, Lanlin & Jones, Andrew M., 2020. "Inequality of Opportunity in Bodyweight among Middle-Aged and Older Chinese: A Distributional Approach," IZA Discussion Papers 13421, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    5. Meng, Fan & Nie, Peng & Sousa-Poza, Alfonso, 2023. "Obesity inequality and well-being in Germany," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 49(C).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Heshmati, Almas, 2004. "A Review of Decomposition of Income Inequality," IZA Discussion Papers 1221, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    2. David E. Sahn, 2012. "Health Inequality across Populations of Individuals," African Development Review, African Development Bank, vol. 24(4), pages 316-326, December.
    3. Meng, Fan & Nie, Peng & Sousa-Poza, Alfonso, 2023. "Obesity inequality and well-being in Germany," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 49(C).
    4. Olivier Bargain & Jinan Zeidan, 2019. "Heterogeneous effects of obesity on mental health: Evidence from Mexico," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 28(4), pages 447-460, April.
    5. Duclos, Jean-Yves & Sahn, David E. & Younger, Stephen D., 2011. "Partial multidimensional inequality orderings," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 95(3), pages 225-238.
    6. Duclos, Jean-Yves & Leblanc, Josée & Sahn, David E., 2011. "Comparing population distributions from bin-aggregated sample data: An application to historical height data from France," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 9(4), pages 419-437.
    7. Nie, Peng & Ding, Lanlin & Jones, Andrew M., 2020. "Inequality of Opportunity in Bodyweight among Middle-Aged and Older Chinese: A Distributional Approach," IZA Discussion Papers 13421, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    8. Florent Bresson, 2008. "The estimation of the growth and redistribution components of changes in poverty: a reassessment," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 9(14), pages 1-7.
    9. Guanghua Wan, 2006. "Poverty Accounting by Factor Components: With an Empirical Illustration Using Chinese Data," WIDER Working Paper Series RP2006-63, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    10. David E. Sahn & Stephen D. Younger, 2006. "Changes in inequality and poverty in Latin America: Looking beyond income to health and education," Journal of Applied Economics, Universidad del CEMA, vol. 9, pages 215-234, November.
    11. Gwozdz, Wencke & Sousa-Poza, Alfonso & Reisch, Lucia A. & Bammann, Karin & Eiben, Gabriele & Kourides, Yiannis & Kovács, Éva & Lauria, Fabio & Konstabel, Kenn & Santaliestra-Pasias, Alba M. & Vyncke, , 2015. "Peer effects on obesity in a sample of European children," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 18(C), pages 139-152.
    12. Ana Balsa & Carlos Díaz, 2018. "Social interactions in health behaviors and conditions," Documentos de Trabajo/Working Papers 1802, Facultad de Ciencias Empresariales y Economia. Universidad de Montevideo..
    13. Samuel Fambon, 2005. "Croissance économique, pauvreté et inégalité des revenus au Cameroun," Revue d’économie du développement, De Boeck Université, vol. 13(1), pages 91-122.
    14. Nie, Peng & Sousa-Poza, Alfonso & He, Xiaobo, 2015. "Peer effects on childhood and adolescent obesity in China," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 35(C), pages 47-69.
    15. repec:ebl:ecbull:v:9:y:2008:i:14:p:1-7 is not listed on IDEAS
    16. Pagan, Ricardo & Haro, Carmen Ordóñez de & Sánchez, Carlos Rivas, 2016. "Obesity, job satisfaction and disability at older ages in Europe," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 20(C), pages 42-54.
    17. Olivier Bargain & Jinan Zeidan, 2014. "The Direct Effect of Obesity on Emotional Well-Being: Evidence from Mexico," AMSE Working Papers 1432, Aix-Marseille School of Economics, France, revised 16 Jul 2014.
    18. Casilda Lasso de la Vega & Ana Urrutia & Oscar Volij, 2011. "An Axiomatic Characterization Of The Theil Inequality Order," Working Papers 1103, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Department of Economics.
    19. Stephen P. Jenkins & Philippe Van Kerm, 2006. "Trends in income inequality, pro-poor income growth, and income mobility," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 58(3), pages 531-548, July.
    20. Scott A. Carson, 2021. "Omitting the Obvious: Cohort Effects in 19th and 20th Century BMI Variation," CESifo Working Paper Series 8817, CESifo.
    21. Eva Camacho-Cuena & Tibor Neugebauer & Christian Seidl, 2007. "Leaky Buckets Versus Compensating Justice: An Experimental Investigation," Working Papers 74, ECINEQ, Society for the Study of Economic Inequality.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    BMI; Waist circumference; Obesity inequality; Decomposition; China;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D30 - Microeconomics - - Distribution - - - General
    • D63 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Equity, Justice, Inequality, and Other Normative Criteria and Measurement
    • I10 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - General
    • I14 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Health and Inequality

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:zbw:hohdps:242018. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/fwhohde.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.