# Are US obesity rates converging?

Listed:
• Xun Li
• Rui Wang

## Abstract

The purpose of the present study is to determine whether US obesity rates are converging. Using US overweight rates and obesity rates data in 50 states and District of Columbia during 1996–2013, the results of this article show that $$\beta$$β-convergence occurred for obesity rates, overweight rates, and overweight and obesity rates during time period 1996–2001. The existence of $$\beta$$β-convergence also varies in different regions. It was also found that $$\sigma$$σ-convergence occurred in the full period 1996–2013 and several sub-periods. These findings imply that more policies and regulations should be placed on specific regions, for example, the Northeast. Meanwhile, relevant policies could be ineffective in some sub-periods without the occurrence of $$\sigma$$σ-convergence.

## Suggested Citation

• Xun Li & Rui Wang, 2016. "Are US obesity rates converging?," Applied Economics Letters, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 23(8), pages 539-543, May.
• Handle: RePEc:taf:apeclt:v:23:y:2016:i:8:p:539-543
DOI: 10.1080/13504851.2015.1085634
as

File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13504851.2015.1085634

As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

## Citations

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

Cited by:

1. Saadet Kasman & Adnan Kasman, 0. "Convergence in obesity and overweight rates across OECD countries: evidence from the stochastic and club convergence tests," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 0, pages 1-34.
2. Duncan, Roberto & Toledo, Patricia, 2018. "Long-run overweight levels and convergence in body mass index," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 31(C), pages 26-39.
3. Sameem, Sediq, 2020. "Are U.S. lung cancer mortality rates converging?," The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 76(C), pages 190-197.
4. Duncan, Roberto & Toledo, Patricia, 2018. "Do overweight and obesity prevalence rates converge in Europe?," Research in Economics, Elsevier, vol. 72(4), pages 482-493.
5. Shahdad Naghshpour & Sediq Sameem, 2019. "Convergence of Mortality Among African Americans," The American Economist, Sage Publications, vol. 64(2), pages 237-245, October.
6. Duncan, Roberto & Toledo, Patricia, 2019. "Inequality in body mass indices across countries: Evidence from convergence tests," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 33(C), pages 40-57.

## 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:taf:apeclt:v:23:y:2016:i:8:p:539-543. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (Chris Longhurst). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/RAEL20 .

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.

We have no references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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.

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

IDEAS is a RePEc service hosted by the Research Division of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis . RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.