http://dx.doi.org/10.4082/kjfm.2016.37.1.64 • Korean J Fam Med 2016;37:64-70
Original Article eISSN: 2092-6715
Association between Obesity and Neighborhood Socioeconomic Status in Korean Adolescents Based on the 2013 Korea Youth Risk Behavior Web-Based Survey Sung Won Choi, Da-jung Park*, Jinseung Kim*, Tae-jin Park, Jun-su Kim, Sunghun Byun, Young-seok Lee, Jung-hoon Kim Department of Family Medicine, Inje University Busan Paik Hospital, Inje University College of Medicine, Busan, Korea
Background: An increase in the obese adolescent population is being recognized as a serious medical and social problem. The present study aimed to examine the association between neighborhood socioeconomic status (SES) and obesity in Korean adolescents based on total available resources and local social inequality models. Methods: The present study used data from the 2013 Korea Youth Risk Behavior Web-based Survey in analyzing 72,438 Korean adolescents aged 12–18. The analysis investigated obesity odds ratio (OR) according to neighborhood SES adjusted for age and individual SES indices, which included family affluence scale (FAS), education level of parents, cohabitation with parents, and weekly allowance. Obesity OR was investigated according to neighborhood SES by FAS, and according to FAS by neighborhood SES. Results: After adjusting for age and individual SES variables, there was no significant association between neighborhood SES and adolescent obesity for either boys or girls. However, girls in the high FAS group showed a pattern of lower neighborhood SES being associated with a significant increase in risk of obesity; in the high neighborhood SES group, boys showed a pattern of higher FAS being associated with a significant increase in risk of obesity, whereas girls show a pattern of decrease. Conclusion: Although limited, the present study demonstrated that some girl groups exhibited a pattern of lower neighborhood SES being associated with an increase in risk of obesity, as well as a gender-based difference in risk of obesity by individual SES. Therefore, measures to prevent adolescent obesity should be established with consideration for differences in risk according to individual and neighborhood SES. Keywords: Obesity; Neighborhood; Socioeconomic Status; Adolescent
Received: February 26, 2015, Revised: July 31, 2015, Accepted: September 24, 2015 *Corresponding Author: Da-jung Park Tel: +82-51-890-6729, Fax: +82-51-894-7554, E-mail:
[email protected] *Corresponding Author: Jinseung Kim Tel: +82-51-890-6729, Fax: +82-51-894-7554, E-mail:
[email protected]
Copyright © 2016 The Korean Academy of Family Medicine This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0) which permits unrestricted noncommercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Sung Won Choi, et al. • Obesity and Neighborhood Socioeconomic Status
INTRODUCTION With a rapid increase in prevalence worldwide, adolescent obesity is being recognized as an important health issue.1) South Korea is also experiencing an increase in obese adolescents due to overnutrition and lack of physical activity. According to recently published reports by Statistics Korea and the Korea Ministry of Gender Equality & Family, the prevalence of obesity in Korean adolescents was 15.3% in 2013, with boys (16.7%) being 2.8% higher than girls (13.9%); these numbers represented a 3.0% and 4.4% increase in prevalence of adolescent obesity in boys and girls, respectively, since 2006.2) Adolescent Obesity can not only contribute to physical ailments that can occur during adolescence, such as hypertension, diabetes, and dyslipidemia, but can also lead to mental disorders, including eating disorders, depression, and suicide.3,4) Moreover, adolescent obesity mostly leads to adult obesity,5) causing various physical, mental, and social issues.6,7) Thus, preventive prescreening and management of adolescents with a high risk of obesity are of utmost importance.8) The causes of obesity include demographic, health behavior, and psychological factors, as well as environmental factors that include family, school, and community, and are associated with each other in a complex manner.9-12) An individual’s socioeconomic characteristics can lead to obesity since these are associated with health behaviors such as nutritional intake and physical activity. Moreover, a community possesses the physical and social traits that can influence an individual’s health, and the socioeconomic characteristics of a region can influence the onset of obesity, since they are related to physical, cultural, and human infrastructure that can influence the health of individuals within that region.13) Among prior studies that examined the influence of socioeconomic characteristics of a region on personal health, Stafford and Marmot approached the topic using two models. The first model was the collective resource model, which was based on the hypothesis that residents in affluent neighborhoods would have better health status than those in impoverished neighborhoods, since they had greater advantages in utilizing material and social resources (social support structure, community services, etc.). The second model was the local social inequality model, which was based on the hypothesis that a greater gap between the socioeconomic status (SES) of an individual and his or her neighborhood would indicate poorer health status of the individual. This study concluded that since the SES of a neighborhood has the trait of influencing the total available resources within the community, it can also influence the health of individuals. However, most existing studies that analyzed the associations between socioeconomic characteristics of neighborhoods and obesity have limitations from using indicators that reflected
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only some of the characteristics, such as work, residence, and education. Moreover, there have been no studies in Korea that have used data representative of Korean adolescents. Thus, the present study aimed to examine the association between neighborhood SES and obesity in Korean adolescents using data from the 2013 Korea Youth Risk Behavior Web-based Survey (KYRBWS).
METHODS 1. Subjects
The present study used raw data from the 2013 KYRBWS, which was obtained from the homepage of KYRBWS after complying with the usage protocol of the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (KCDC).14) The Korean version of the regional Deprivation Index (DI) from Health Promotion Strategies and Program Development for Health Inequalities Alleviation that was published in December 2009 by an academic cooperation foundation of Hanyang University was also used.15) KYRBWS is an anonymous online survey in a self-reporting format that Korea Health and Human Services, KCDC, and the Korea Ministry of Education, Science, and Technology have conducted annually since 2005 among middle and high school students in Korea to investigate health status. The survey was developed for sample schools according to city size, regional group, and school type among 16 major cities and provinces in Korea, and one sample class per grade level was randomly selected. All students in the sample classes were then surveyed on 126 questions in 15 categories, including smoking, drinking, physical activity, dietary habits, mental health, health equity, and others; the survey was conducted between June 1 and July 17, 2013 on 72,435 students from a total of 800 schools (400 middle and 400 high schools), and the response rate was 96.6%, with 36,655 boys and 35,780 girls participating in the survey.
2. Variable Measurements
Self-reported height and weight were used to calculate body mass index (BMI, kg/m2), and weight status was classified as percentile according to gender- and age-specific BMI on the 2007 Korea National Growth Chart for Children and Adolescents. The subjects were classified as underweight for < 5 percentile, normal weight for ≥5 to
