Dataset Information

Obesity, underweight and BMI distribution characteristics of children by gross national income and income inequality: results from an international survey.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Economic wealth and income inequality may impact on childhood BMI distribution by affecting overconsumption of food and sedentary forms of transportation and entertainment across the whole or some of the population.

Objectives

To determine whether BMI distribution of children differs by gross national income (GNI) per capita and Gini index derived from World Bank data.

Methods

Secondary analysis of largely self-reported height and weight data from a multi-country, cross-sectional study (ISAAC), of 77,963 children aged 6-7 (from 19 countries) and 205,388 adolescents aged 13-14 (from 36 countries), were used to examine underweight vs obesity prevalence and BMI distribution skewness, median and dispersion.

Results

Children and adolescents from 'lower' GNI countries had higher prevalence of underweight than those from 'higher' GNI countries (6% vs 3%, p = 0.03; 2% vs 1%, p = 0.05 respectively), but the prevalence of obesity was not different (2% vs 5%, p = 0.29; 2% vs 2%, p = 0.66). BMI distribution of participants from 'higher' GNI countries had higher median, without significant difference in skewness or dispersion compared to 'lower' GNI countries (higher medians +1.1 kg/m² for 6-7 year olds, and + 0.7 kg/m², +1.2 kg/m² for 13-14 year old girls and boys respectively). Gini index was not associated with underweight or obesity prevalence in either children or adolescents, nor with any BMI distribution characteristics with one exception. Adolescent girls from higher income inequality countries had a greater median BMI (+0.7 kg/m²) and a less skewed BMI distribution.

Conclusions

It appears that the obesogenic impact of economic prosperity affects all children similarly. Income inequality may have a gender specific effect affecting BMI distribution in adolescent girls.

SUBMITTER: Murphy R

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6009988 | biostudies-literature |

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Project description:BackgroundSolving inequality of health human resource (HHR) is one of the motives of Pakistan health policies, however, there is still exists a massive quantity of HHR inequality in almost every district of Pakistan. The main goal of this research is to scrutinize the disparity in allocation of human health resources among 114 regions of Pakistan from the year 2012 to 2016 and to expose the foundations and aspects of HHR inequality.MethodsThe data regarding this research has been obtained from Pakistan Statistical Bureau from the year 2012 to 2016. The statistics had also been collected from United Nation Development Program (UNDP) Pakistan 2017, Pakistan economic surveys, Ministry of finance Islamabad, Pakistan, Pakistan Social and Living standards Measurement (PSLM) Surveys from 2012 to 2016. The information incorporates district wise; the number of specialists and medical caretakers those are doctors and nurses, number of hospitals, number of beds, number of dispensaries, number of beds in dispensaries, urbanization, total estimated GNI per capita, infant mortality rate, geographical area, and population size. The concentration index is used to compute the extent of disparity in allocation of human health resources and decomposition analysis is also carried out to enumerate the contribution of each variable towards total inequality. Furthermore, the horizontal concentration was used to measure the participation of the need variable.Results7. The consequent Concentration Indexes (CI) of the doctors and nurses for the year 2016 are 0.60 (95% CI= 0.42, 0.78) and 0.67 (95% CI= 0.42, 0.92) respectively. Decomposition of the concentration indexes exposed that the monetary status accounts are the leading percentage contributor in doctors disparity (77.5, 44.9, 30.6, - 11.6% and 13%) and population size (- 20.7,-10.5%, 4.6, 49.8, 19.7%). Furthermore, the monetary status formulates the superior contribution HHR disparity from nurses inequality (104.5, 75.1, 59.2, - 54.3%, - 40.1%), and population size (- 53.7, - 53.6%, - 36.3, 83.8, 65.3%). Moreover, after the identification of the need variable the Horizontal Concentration Index (HCI) values of doctors from the year 2012 to 2016 are 0.62, 0.64, 0.63, 0.62 and 0.61 and HCI of the nurses are 0.69, 0.70, 0.69, 0.68 and 0.67.ConclusionThe pro-rich disparity in allocation of HHR has been scrutinized from the year 2012 to 2016 among 114 districts of Pakistan. The hard concern of HHR disparity should be concentrated by the complete procedures from a multidisciplinary approach.