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Causal effects of socioeconomic status on central adiposity: Evidence using panel data from urban Mexico

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  • LEVASSEUR Pierre

Abstract

The current economic growth and increase in urbanization has led to the adoption of new lifestyles in middle-income countries such as Mexico. Associated with overweight, obesity and chronic diseases, the nutrition transition process reveals important socioeconomic issues. Using panel data from the Mexican Family Life Survey, the purpose of the study is to estimate causal effects of household socioeconomic status (SES) on nutritional outcomes among Mexican adults from urban areas. We divide the analysis into two steps. First, using a mixed clustering procedure, we distinguish four socioeconomic classes based on income, education and occupation dimensions: (i) a poor class; (ii) a lower-middle class; (iii) an upper-middle class; (iv) a rich class. Second, using an econometric framework adapted to our study (the Hausman-Taylor estimator), we measure the impact of belonging to these socioeconomic groups on individual anthropometric indicators, based on the body-mass index (BMI) and the waist-to-height ratio (WHtR). Our results make several contributions: (i) we show that a new middle class, rising out of poverty, is the most exposed to central adiposity; (ii) as individuals from the upper class seem to be fatter than individuals from the upper-middle class, we can reject the assumption of an inverted U-shaped relationship between socioeconomic and anthropometric status as commonly suggested in emerging economies; (iii) the influence of SES on anthropometric indicators appears to be particularly strong for men.

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  • LEVASSEUR Pierre, 2015. "Causal effects of socioeconomic status on central adiposity: Evidence using panel data from urban Mexico," Cahiers du GREThA (2007-2019) 2015-09, Groupe de Recherche en Economie Théorique et Appliquée (GREThA).
  • Handle: RePEc:grt:wpegrt:2015-09
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    Cited by:

    1. Bertille Daran & Pierre Levasseur & Matthieu Clément, 2023. "Updating the association between socioeconomic status and obesity in low‐income and lower‐middle‐income sub‐Saharan African countries: A literature review," Post-Print hal-04157386, HAL.
    2. Pierre Levasseur & François Mariotti & Isabelle Denis & Olga Davidenko, 2022. "The association between meat consumption and body mass index varies according to the socioeconomic status in a representative sample of French adults," Working Papers hal-03744721, HAL.
    3. Pierre LEVASSEUR, 2016. "The effects of bodyweight on wages in urban Mexico," Cahiers du GREThA (2007-2019) 2016-18, Groupe de Recherche en Economie Théorique et Appliquée (GREThA).
    4. Wu, Hania Fei, 2021. "Social determination, health selection or indirect selection? Examining the causal directions between socioeconomic status and obesity in the Chinese adult population," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 269(C).
    5. Levasseur, Pierre, 2017. "The ambiguous causal relationship between body-mass and labour income in emerging economies: The case of Mexico," MPRA Paper 81933, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    6. Clément, Matthieu & Levasseur, Pierre & Seetahul, Suneha & Piaser, Lucie, 2021. "Does inequality have a silver lining? Municipal income inequality and obesity in Mexico," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 272(C).
    7. Weidong Li & Shuzhuo Li & Marcus W. Feldman, 2021. "Socioeconomic Status, Institutional Power, and Body Mass Index among Chinese Adults," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 18(20), pages 1-19, October.
    8. Levasseur, Pierre, 2019. "Can social programs break the vicious cycle between poverty and obesity? Evidence from urban Mexico," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 113(C), pages 143-156.
    9. Esposito, Lucio & Villaseñor, Adrián & Rodríguez, Enrique Cuevas & Millett, Christopher, 2020. "The economic gradient of obesity in Mexico: Independent predictive roles of absolute and relative wealth by gender," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 250(C).
    10. Valentina Alvarez-Saavedra à & Pierre Levasseur & Suneha Seetahul, 2023. "The Role of Gender Inequality in the Obesity Epidemic: A Case Study from India," Post-Print hal-04051768, HAL.
    11. Daran, Bertille & Levasseur, Pierre, 2022. "Is overweight still a problem of rich in sub-Saharan Africa? Insights based on female-oriented demographic and health surveys," World Development Perspectives, Elsevier, vol. 25(C).

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    anthropometric indicators; central adiposity; clustering method; Mexico; nutrition transition; obesity; overweight; socioeconomic status.;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • I14 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Health and Inequality
    • O12 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Microeconomic Analyses of Economic Development

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