Obesity under affluence varies by welfare regimes: the effect of fast food, insecurity, and inequality.
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.
Offer
Avner
A
All Souls College, University of Oxford, High Street, Oxford, OX1 4AL, UK. avner.offer@all-souls.ox.ac.uk
Pechey
Rachel
R
Ulijaszek
Stanley
S
D001315:Australia / Q000453:epidemiology; D002170:Canada / Q000453:epidemiology; D005060:Europe / Q000453:epidemiology; D057140:Fast Foods / Q000191:economics*; D005523:Food Supply / Q000191:economics*; D054624:Health Status Disparities; D006306:Health Surveys; D006801:Humans; D018803:Models, Economic; D015999:Multivariate Analysis; D009765:Obesity / Q000191:economics* / Q000453:epidemiology / Q000523:psychology; D011287:Prejudice; D012923:Social Class; D012946:Social Welfare / Q000191:economics* / Q000523:psychology; D013315:Stress, Psychological; D014481:United States / Q000453:epidemiology