title: Educational disparity in obesity among U.S. adults, 1984-2013.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  Examine the annual trends in educational disparity in obesity among U.S. adults aged 18 years and more from 1984 to 2013.
  
  
  METHODS
  Secondary data analysis of 6,147,379 participants in a repeated cross-sectional nationally representative health survey of U.S. adults.
  
  
  RESULTS
  The obesity prevalence among people with primary school or lower education increased from 17.46% or 3.41 times the prevalence among college graduates (5.12%) in 1984 to 36.16% or 1.73 times the prevalence among college graduates (20.94%) in 2013. In any given year, the obesity prevalence increased monotonically with lower education level. The obesity prevalence across education subgroups without a college degree gradually converged since early 2000s, whereas that between those subgroups and college graduates diverged since late 1980s. Absolute educational disparity in obesity widened by 60.84% to 61.14% during 1984-2013 based on the absolute concentration index and the slope index of inequality, respectively; meanwhile, relative educational disparity narrowed by 52.06% to 52.15% based on the relative index of inequality and the relative concentration index, respectively. The trends in educational disparity in obesity differed substantially by gender, race/ethnicity, age group, and obesity severity.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  There was substantial educational disparity in obesity among U.S. adults and the trend differed across population subgroups.
authors.affiliation: Department of Kinesiology and Community Health, College of Applied Health Sciences, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Champaign. Electronic address: ran5@illinois.edu.
authors.forename: Ruopeng
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: An
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D003430:Cross-Sectional Studies; D004522:Educational Status; D005260:Female; D054624:Health Status Disparities; D006306:Health Surveys; D006801:Humans; D016015:Logistic Models; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D008913:Minority Groups / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D009765:Obesity / Q000453:epidemiology*; D015995:Prevalence; D012923:Social Class; D014481:United States / Q000453:epidemiology; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: Education; Health disparity; Obesity