Impact of Economic Condition on Obesity

Abstract

Prevalence of obesity has increased with alarming rate in the last two or three decades worldwide. The prevalence statistics shows that obesity pandemic is all-pervading even in the developing nations like India. In the present study an attempt has been made to report the prevalence of obesity on the basis of body mass index among school girls of Punjab, total 6000 students were selected with stratified random sampling technique, ranging in age from 10-17 years. The data was obtained from various government and private schools of Punjab based on economic status (1009 from high economic status, 2228 from middle economic status & 2763 from low economic status group). Height of each individual is measured with anthropometric rode and the body mass index (BMI) was calculated by the bio electrical impedance machine with scale HBF-361. Further analysis of variance (Anova) and Scheffe’s post hoc test was employed for testing the hypothesis; the level of significance was set at 0.05 levels. The results show that overweight & obesity was more prevalent among those girls who are associated from high economic status families & vice versa.