Socioeconomic status and obesity in Cairo, Egypt: A heavy burden for all
- DOI
- 10.1016/j.jegh.2013.09.001How to use a DOI?
- Keywords
- Social epidemiology; Health inequities; Socioeconomic status; Obesity; Egypt
- Abstract
Studies have generally shown a positive association between socioeconomic status (SES) and obesity in low-income countries, but few have tested this relationship in the Middle East where obesity prevalence is extraordinarily high and the nutrition profile more closely resembles developed world contexts. The objective of this study is to examine the SES-obesity association in Cairo, Egypt.
Multinomial regression analyses were conducted and predicted probabilities were found for overweight and obesity status among adult men and women in a stratified analysis. Data were taken from the 2007 Cairo Urban Inequity Study which collected information on 3993 individuals from 50 neighborhoods in the Cairo Governorate. Five different measures of SES were utilized – education, household expenditures, household assets, subjective wealth, and father’s education. No significant associations were found between most measures of SES and overweight/obesity in this population. Overweight and obesity are prevalent across the SES spectrum.
These findings suggest that obesity programs and policies should be targeted at all SES groups in Cairo, although specific mechanisms may vary by SES and should be explored further in future studies.
- Copyright
- © 2013 Ministry of Health, Saudi Arabia. Published by Elsevier Ltd.
- Open Access
- This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
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TY - JOUR AU - Mona Mowafi AU - Zeinab Khadr AU - Ichiro Kawachi AU - S.V. Subramanian AU - Allan Hill AU - Gary G. Bennett PY - 2013 DA - 2013/10/16 TI - Socioeconomic status and obesity in Cairo, Egypt: A heavy burden for all JO - Journal of Epidemiology and Global Health SP - 13 EP - 21 VL - 4 IS - 1 SN - 2210-6014 UR - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jegh.2013.09.001 DO - 10.1016/j.jegh.2013.09.001 ID - Mowafi2013 ER -