Abstract
The current study aimed to assess the prevalence of obesity and to explore the relationship between socioeconomic status and obesity among adolescents in Taiwan, a transitioning country. Data from the Taiwan School Physical Fitness Database on 1,875,627 Taiwanese adolescents aged 10–18 years were analyzed. The average family income per household in each district was collected from the national statistical institutional database. Descriptive statistics, Chi-square tests, Pearson correlation analysis, and mixed model analyses were used. The overall prevalence of combined overweight and obesity was 28.1%. The prevalence of overweight/obesity significantly differed according to gender and age. Furthermore, the average family income per household was negatively associated with the district-level prevalence of obesity. Additionally, when controlling for physical fitness, the average family income per household remained negatively associated with adolescent obesity. In addition, multilevel analysis was also applied to explore the relationship between district-level socioeconomic status and individual-level obesity to prevent the nested data structure from affecting the results. The results revealed that the average family income per household negatively correlated with individual obesity. These findings provide insight for public health officials into preventing and managing adolescent obesity.
Highlights
The current study aimed to assess the prevalence of obesity and to explore the relationship between socioeconomic status and obesity among adolescents in Taiwan, a transitioning country
Despite growing concern regarding the relationship between socioeconomic status and adolescent obesity in developed and developing countries, little research has been conducted on this relationship in countries in economic transition
The findings revealed only a 0.2% (0.02/(0.02 + 16.15)) variance in body mass index (BMI) across districts, which indicates that the negative relationship between socioeconomic status and obesity in Taiwanese adolescents in the present study does not differ across districts
Summary
The current study aimed to assess the prevalence of obesity and to explore the relationship between socioeconomic status and obesity among adolescents in Taiwan, a transitioning country. The average family income per household was negatively associated with the district-level prevalence of obesity. The associations between socioeconomic status and adolescent obesity have been well established in developing and developed countries, little attention has been paid to adolescents in newly developed countries such as Taiwan. We conducted a large-scale analysis of a nationally representative sample of young adolescents in the most current Taiwan study to date, with the aims of investigating the relationship between socioeconomic status and adolescent obesity and understanding how socioeconomic status promotes weight gain in a country in economic transition. Empirical evidence has shown a negative relationship between socioeconomic status and obesity among adolescents in developed countries, such as the United States[8], England[9], and Canada[10]. Compared to highly developed countries, such as the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and European countries including Germany and France, Taiwan is still a relatively newly developed country that is in a period of rapid economic transition and development
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