Obesity under affluence varies by welfare regimes: the effect of fast food, insecurity, and inequality

Author: Offer, A.; Pechey, R.; Ulijaszek, S.

Description: Among affluent countries, those with market-liberal welfare regimes (which are also English-speaking) tend to have the highest prevalence of obesity. The impact of cheap, accessible high-energy food is often invoked in explanation. An alternative approach is that overeating is a response to stress, and that competition, uncertainty, and inequality make market-liberal societies more stressful. This ecological regression meta-study pools 96 body-weight surveys from 11 countries c. 1994-2004. The fast-food ‘shock’ impact is found to work most strongly in market-liberal countries. Economic insecurity, measured in several different ways, was almost twice as powerful, while the impact of inequality was weak, and went in the opposite direction.

Subject headings: Australia/epidemiology; Canada/epidemiology; Europe/epidemiology; Fast Foods/economics; Food Supply/economics; Health Status Disparities; Health Surveys; Humans; Models, Economic; Multivariate Analysis; Obesity/economics/epidemiology/psychology; Prejudice; Social Class; Social Welfare/economics/psychology; Stress, Psychological; United States/epidemiology

Publication year: 2010

Journal or book title: Economics and Human Biology

Volume: 8

Issue: 3

Pages: 297-308

Find the full text : http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.443.4761&rep=rep1&type=pdf

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Type: Journal Article

Serial number: 1095