IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ucn/wpaper/200627.html

Body Mass Index and the measurement of obesity

Author

Listed:
  • David (David Patrick) Madden

Abstract

This paper proposes a new method of measuring obesity using Body Mass Index (BMI) data. Conventional measures which simply count the number of individuals with BMI in excess of an upper limit ignore the extent by which individuals exceed BMI limits and also the increased risk ratios for various conditions associated very high levels of BMI. This paper suggests that measures currently used in the poverty literature can be usefully applied to measure obesity and provide us with measures which may be more relevant from a policy perspective. The approach is applied to data for Ireland.

Suggested Citation

  • David (David Patrick) Madden, 2006. "Body Mass Index and the measurement of obesity," Working Papers 200627, School of Economics, University College Dublin.
    • Handle: RePEc:ucn:wpaper:200627
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10197/782
    File Function: First version, 2006
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Nolan, Brian & Gannon, Brenda & Layte, Richard & Watson, Dorothy & Whelan, Christopher T. & Williams, James, 2002. "Monitoring Poverty Trends in Ireland: Results from the 2000 Living in Ireland survey," Research Series, Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI), number PRS45.
    2. Atkinson, A B, 1987. "On the Measurement of Poverty," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 55(4), pages 749-764, July.
    3. Foster, James & Greer, Joel & Thorbecke, Erik, 1984. "A Class of Decomposable Poverty Measures," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 52(3), pages 761-766, May.
    4. David Madden & Fiona Smith, 2000. "Poverty in Ireland, 1987-1994 - A Stochastic Dominance Approach," The Economic and Social Review, Economic and Social Studies, vol. 31(3), pages 187-214.
    5. David (David Patrick) Madden & Fiona Smith, 2000. "Poverty in Ireland, 1987-1994 : a stochastic dominance approach," Open Access publications 10197/780, School of Economics, University College Dublin.
    6. Sen, Amartya K, 1976. "Poverty: An Ordinal Approach to Measurement," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 44(2), pages 219-231, March.
    7. 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.
    8. Sanz-de-Galdeano, Anna, 2005. "The Obesity Epidemic in Europe," IZA Discussion Papers 1814, IZA Network @ LISER.
    9. Bleichrodt, Han & van Doorslaer, Eddy, 2006. "A welfare economics foundation for health inequality measurement," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 25(5), pages 945-957, September.
    10. Richard Layte & Bertrand Maitre & Brian Nolan & Dorothy Watson & James Williams & Barra Casey, 2000. "Monitoring Poverty Trends: Results from the 1998 Living in Ireland Survey," Papers WP132, Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI).
    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. Bhagowalia, Priya & Chen, Susan E. & Masters, William A., 2011. "Effects and determinants of mild underweight among preschool children across countries and over time," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 9(1), pages 66-77, January.
    2. Priya Bhagowalia & Susan E. Chen & William A. Masters, 2008. "The Distribution Of Child Nutritional Status Across Countries And Over Time," Working Papers 08-04, Purdue University, College of Agriculture, Department of Agricultural Economics.
    3. Gannon, Brenda & Layte, Richard & McGregor, Pat & Madden, David & Nolan, Anne & O'Neill, Ciaran & Smith, Samantha, 2007. "The Provision and Use of Health Services, Health Inequalities and Health and Social Gain," Research Series, Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI), number BMI196 edited by Nolan, Brian.
    4. Laudicella, Mauro & Cookson, Richard & Jones, Andrew M. & Rice, Nigel, 2009. "Health care deprivation profiles in the measurement of inequality and inequity: An application to GP fundholding in the English NHS," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 28(6), pages 1048-1061, December.

    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. David (David Patrick) Madden, 2002. "A review of recent research into poverty in Ireland," Working Papers 200232, School of Economics, University College Dublin.
    2. Sabina Alkire & James Foster, 2011. "Understandings and misunderstandings of multidimensional poverty measurement," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 9(2), pages 289-314, June.
    3. AKA, Bedia François, 2016. "Quantitative Impacts Of Basic Income Grant On Income Distribution In Cote D’Ivoire: Time To Change Our Societies," Revista Galega de Economía, University of Santiago de Compostela. Faculty of Economics and Business., vol. 25(1), pages 159-170.
    4. Martin Ravallion, 2016. "Are the world’s poorest being left behind?," Journal of Economic Growth, Springer, vol. 21(2), pages 139-164, June.
    5. Jalan, Jyotsna & Ravallion, Martin, 1996. "Transient poverty in rural China," Policy Research Working Paper Series 1616, The World Bank.
    6. Núñez Velázquez, José Javier, 2009. "Estado actual y nuevas aproximaciones a la medición de la pobreza/Current Status and New Approaches to the Measurement of Poverty," Estudios de Economia Aplicada, Estudios de Economia Aplicada, vol. 27, pages 325-346, Agosto.
    7. Yitzhaki, Shlomo, 2002. "Do we need a separate poverty measurement?," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 18(1), pages 61-85, March.
    8. S. Subramanian, 2009. "Revisiting the Normalization Axiom in Poverty Measurement," Finnish Economic Papers, Finnish Economic Association, vol. 22(2), pages 89-98, Autumn.
    9. Brian Nolan & Bertrand Maitre, 2000. "A Comparative Perspective on Trends in Income Inequality in Ireland," The Economic and Social Review, Economic and Social Studies, vol. 31(4), pages 329-350.
    10. Müller, Kai-Uwe & Steiner, Viktor, 2008. "Would a Legal Minimum Wage Reduce Poverty? A Microsimulation Study for Germany," IZA Discussion Papers 3491, IZA Network @ LISER.
    11. Marcello Basili & Paulo Casaca & Alain Chateauneuf & Maurizio Franzini, 2017. "Multidimensional Pigou–Dalton transfers and social evaluation functions," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 83(4), pages 573-590, December.
    12. Suman Seth and Gaston Yalonetzky, 2018. "Assessing Deprivation with Ordinal Variables: Depth Sensitivity and Poverty Aversion," OPHI Working Papers ophiwp123.pdf, Queen Elizabeth House, University of Oxford.
    13. Alkire, Sabina & Oldiges, Christian & Kanagaratnam, Usha, 2021. "Examining multidimensional poverty reduction in India 2005/6–2015/16: Insights and oversights of the headcount ratio," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 142(C).
    14. Zheng, Buhong, 2001. "Statistical inference for poverty measures with relative poverty lines," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 101(2), pages 337-356, April.
    15. Bibi Sami, 2003. "On the Impact of Better Targeted Transfers on Poverty in Tunisia," Review of Middle East Economics and Finance, De Gruyter, vol. 1(1), pages 17-35, January.
    16. Malokele Nanivazo, 2015. "First Order Dominance Analysis: Child Wellbeing in the Democratic Republic of Congo," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 122(1), pages 235-255, May.
    17. repec:qeh:ophiwp:ophiwp009 is not listed on IDEAS
    18. Canagarajan, Sudharshan & Ngwafon, John & Thomas, Saji, 1997. "The evolution of poverty and welfare in Nigeria, 1985-92," Policy Research Working Paper Series 1715, The World Bank.
    19. repec:ebl:ecbull:v:9:y:2006:i:3:p:1-8 is not listed on IDEAS
    20. Sami Bibi, 2004. "Comparing Multidimensional Poverty between Egypt and Tunisia," Cahiers de recherche 0416, CIRPEE.
    21. Nora Lustig, 1991. "Índices y ordenamientos de pobreza: Una aplicación para México," Estudios Económicos, El Colegio de México, Centro de Estudios Económicos, vol. 6(2), pages 271-285.
    22. Kawada, Yoko & Nakamura, Yuta & Okamoto, Noriaki, 2025. "A measurement of population ageing: From the perspective of thickness of the labor force," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 134(C), pages 50-57.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • I12 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Health Behavior
    • I31 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Welfare, Well-Being, and Poverty - - - General Welfare, Well-Being
    • I32 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Welfare, Well-Being, and Poverty - - - Measurement and Analysis of Poverty

    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:ucn:wpaper:200627. 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: UCD School of Economics (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/educdie.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.