Exploring the implications of the relationship between BMI and household consumptions for countries in transition

Abstract

AbstractThis article explores the relationship between body mass index (BMI) and social status, namely household consumption and university education of the respondents, together with a set of demographics of 27 transitional countries in Eastern Europe using the data of the 2016 Life in Transition Survey. The two‐stage least squares (2SLS) estimations are conducted on the full sample of 27 countries, the sub‐datasets of former Soviet Union republics, as well as other Eastern European transitional countries, males and females, respectively, in an effort to compare the relationships between BMI and social status in different contexts. The results highlighted two important findings: First, household consumption has a strong and positive correlation with BMI across all the sub‐datasets. Second, the father's education of the respondent is a strong predictor in predicting low BMI. These findings indicate that these transitional countries still run the same model as that typical developing countries, 25 years after the beginning of the transition.