IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/plo/pone00/0156945.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Socioeconomic Gradient in Childhood Obesity and Hypertension: A Multilevel Population-Based Study in a Chinese Community

Author

Listed:
  • Patrick Ip
  • Frederick Ka Wing Ho
  • Hung-Kwan So
  • Dorothy Fung-ying Chan
  • Matthew Ho
  • Winnie Tso
  • E Anthony S Nelson

Abstract

Background: This study aims to assess evidence for any socioeconomic gradients in childhood obesity and hypertension in a population-representative sample in Hong Kong, China. Methods: The data of a stratified random sampled growth survey collected in 2005–2006 was matched with a population by-census. Obesity was defined using the International Obesity Task Force standard and hypertension was defined using the Hong Kong norm table. Family socioeconomic status (SES) was measured by maternal education level. Neighbourhood SES was measured by median household income of the neighbourhood. Multilevel Poisson regression models with robust standard error were used to test the association. Body mass indices of children’s parents were included as potential confounders. Intra-school/neighbourhood correlations were adjusted using random factors. Results: Totally 14842 children (age 6–19 years) included in the analysis, in which 16.6% of them were overweight or obese. Children whose mother only completed secondary school or below had higher risk of childhood obesity (RR 1.41, 95% CI 1.13–1.76, p = 0.003) and hypertension (RR 1.18, 95% CI 1.01–1.36, p = 0.03). Meanwhile, children in the lowest neighbourhood SES group had higher risk of childhood underweight (RR 1.61, 95% CI 1.04–2.49, p = 0.03), overweight (RR 1.35, 95% CI 1.05–1.72, p = 0.02), and obesity (RR 2.07, 95% CI 1.11–3.88, p = 0.02). Conclusions: Socioeconomic gradient in childhood obesity and hypertension existed in Hong Kong, one of the most developed cities in China. These results have implications for policymakers and public health experts and highlight the need to monitor trends in other parts of China.

Suggested Citation

  • Patrick Ip & Frederick Ka Wing Ho & Hung-Kwan So & Dorothy Fung-ying Chan & Matthew Ho & Winnie Tso & E Anthony S Nelson, 2016. "Socioeconomic Gradient in Childhood Obesity and Hypertension: A Multilevel Population-Based Study in a Chinese Community," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 11(6), pages 1-12, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0156945
    DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0156945
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0156945
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0156945&type=printable
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1371/journal.pone.0156945?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Imai, Kosuke & Keele, Luke & Tingley, Dustin & Yamamoto, Teppei, 2011. "Unpacking the Black Box of Causality: Learning about Causal Mechanisms from Experimental and Observational Studies," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 105(4), pages 765-789, November.
    2. Rockhill, B. & Newman, B. & Weinberg, C., 1998. "Use and misuse of population attributable fractions," American Journal of Public Health, American Public Health Association, vol. 88(1), pages 15-19.
    3. Tingley, Dustin & Yamamoto, Teppei & Hirose, Kentaro & Keele, Luke & Imai, Kosuke, 2014. "mediation: R Package for Causal Mediation Analysis," Journal of Statistical Software, Foundation for Open Access Statistics, vol. 59(i05).
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Michael Osei Mireku & Alina Rodriguez, 2020. "Family Income Gradients in Adolescent Obesity, Overweight and Adiposity Persist in Extremely Deprived and Extremely Affluent Neighbourhoods but Not in Middle-Class Neighbourhoods: Evidence from the UK," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 17(2), pages 1-12, January.
    2. Jianwei Shi & Duxun Tan & Huilin Xie & Beilei Yang & Rui Liu & Dehua Yu & Yuan Lu & Bing Mei & Zhaoxin Wang, 2017. "Unequal Distribution of Overweight Adolescents in Immigrant-Rich Areas: Analysis of Disparities among Public and Private School Students in Shanghai, China," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 14(3), pages 1-15, March.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Schuessler, Julian, 2024. "Causal analysis with observational data," OSF Preprints wam94, Center for Open Science.
    2. Walk,Erin Elizabeth & Garimella,Kiran & Christia,Fotini, 2022. "Displacement and Return in the Internet Era : How Social Media Captures Migration Decisionsin Northern Syria," Policy Research Working Paper Series 10024, The World Bank.
    3. Adam C. Sales, 2017. "Review," Journal of Educational and Behavioral Statistics, , vol. 42(1), pages 69-84, February.
    4. Cammett, Melani & Şaşmaz, Aytuğ, 2017. "Political Context, Organizational Mission, and the Quality of Social Services: Insights from the Health Sector in Lebanon," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 98(C), pages 120-132.
    5. Assefa, Dawit Z. & Liao, Ching T. & Misganaw, Bisrat A., 2022. "Unpacking the negative impact of initial informality on innovation: The mediating roles of investments in R&D and employee training," Technovation, Elsevier, vol. 114(C).
    6. Egle Vaznyte & Petra Andries & Sarah Demeulemeester, 2021. "“Don’t leave me this way!” Drivers of parental hostility and employee spin-offs’ performance," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 57(1), pages 265-293, June.
    7. Zhang, Chao & Guan, Jiancheng, 2021. "Returnee policies in China: Does a strategy of alleviating the financing difficulty of returnee firms promote innovation?," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 164(C).
    8. Jing Wang & Yunshi Mao, 2020. "Pains and gains of environmental management system certification for the sustainable development of manufacturing companies: Heterogeneous effects of industry peer learning," Business Strategy and the Environment, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 29(5), pages 2092-2109, July.
    9. Brown, Martin & Henchoz, Caroline & Spycher, Thomas, 2018. "Culture and financial literacy: Evidence from a within-country language border," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 150(C), pages 62-85.
    10. Ward, Jeffrey T. & Hartley, Richard D. & Tillyer, Rob, 2016. "Unpacking gender and racial/ethnic biases in the federal sentencing of drug offenders: A causal mediation approach," Journal of Criminal Justice, Elsevier, vol. 46(C), pages 196-206.
    11. Ali Tafti & Galit Shmueli, 2020. "Beyond Overall Treatment Effects: Leveraging Covariates in Randomized Experiments Guided by Causal Structure," Information Systems Research, INFORMS, vol. 31(4), pages 1183-1199, December.
    12. Anastasia Hernández-Alemán & Noelia Cruz-Pérez & Juan C. Santamarta, 2024. "The Average Direct, Indirect and Total Effects of Environmental Concern on Pro-Environmental Behavior," Land, MDPI, vol. 13(8), pages 1-26, August.
    13. Mancuso, Raffaele & Rossi-Lamastra, Cristina & Franzoni, Chiara, 2023. "Topic choice, gendered language, and the under-funding of female scholars in mission-oriented research," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 52(6).
    14. Jip Leendertse & Frank J. van Rijnsoever & Chris P. Eveleens, 2021. "The sustainable start‐up paradox: Predicting the business and climate performance of start‐ups," Business Strategy and the Environment, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 30(2), pages 1019-1036, February.
    15. Rassaby, Madeleine & Shakya, Holly B. & Fowler, James H. & Oveis, Christopher & Sieber, William J. & Jain, Sonia & Stein, Murray B. & Taylor, Charles T., 2024. "Application of an egocentric social network approach to examine changes in social connections following treatment for anxiety and depression: A novel measurement tool for clinical trials research?," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 350(C).
    16. Auzepy, Alix & Bannier, Christina E. & Gärtner, Florian, 2024. "Looking beyond ESG preferences: The role of sustainable finance literacy in sustainable investing," CFS Working Paper Series 719, Center for Financial Studies (CFS).
    17. Woo Chang Kang & Jae Seung Lee & BK Song, 2020. "Envy and Pride: How Economic Inequality Deepens Happiness Inequality in South Korea," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 150(2), pages 617-637, July.
    18. Sverker C. Jagers & Erick Lachapelle & Johan Martinsson & Simon Matti, 2021. "Bridging the ideological gap? How fairness perceptions mediate the effect of revenue recycling on public support for carbon taxes in the United States, Canada and Germany," Review of Policy Research, Policy Studies Organization, vol. 38(5), pages 529-554, September.
    19. Burhan Can Karahasan & Firat Bilgel, 2018. "State-Business Relations and Financial Accessibility: Explaining Firm Performance in the MENA Region," Working Papers 1279, Economic Research Forum, revised 26 Dec 2018.
    20. Brown, Martin & Henchoz, Caroline & Spycher, Thomas, 2017. "Culture and Financial Literacy," Working Papers on Finance 1703, University of St. Gallen, School of Finance.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0156945. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: plosone (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.