Abstract
Obesity is a prominent global public health challenge as its prevalence has grown. Even though the increase in prevalence of obesity in Korea has been relatively low, it is expected to continually increase in the next several years, leading to social and economic burdens. This study aimed to assess socioeconomic inequalities in obesity among Korean adults. Using nationally representative survey datasets, the concentration index (CI) and decomposition of the CI were used to capture and quantify obesity-related inequalities from 1998 to 2015. The results suggested that pro-poor inequalities in obesity existed in Korea, indicating that obesity was more concentrated among individuals with lower income. In a gender-stratified model, obesity was more concentrated among women with lower income and men with higher income, showing that the trend and magnitude of inequalities in obesity each vary by gender. The decomposition approach revealed that, over the past 17 years, the main contributors to the existing inequalities were higher education and higher income levels. These findings suggest that comprehensive and multifaceted interventions at the local and national levels should be considered to address the identified income- and education-related barriers with respect to obesity among Korean adults.
Highlights
Obesity is a growing public health challenge [1]
Korea National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (KNHANES) is comprised of noninstitutionalized Koreans living in Korea who are sampled based on a multistage clustered probability design [33]
By employing the Concentration Index (CI) approach, this study reveals that inequalities in obesity were in the pro-rich direction in 1998 but changed to the pro-poor direction after 2007 to 2009
Summary
Obesity is a growing public health challenge [1]. Over the past few decades, the prevalence of obesity has sharply increased in most countries [2]. Co-operation and Development (OECD) highlights that the rapidly increasing overweight and obesity population among adults have become prevalent, with global estimated rates of 39% and 13%, respectively [3,4]. While the rate of excess weight condition in Korea is one of the lowest among OECD countries, excess weight conditions have been steadily increasing in Korea over the past few years [5,6,7]. It has been estimated that over 30% of the adult population is overweight or obesity [8,9] While this is still a relatively low prevalence, it is expected to continually increase, with indicators suggesting that the obesity rates will rise by a further 5% within in the ten years [10]
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