Obesity and inequality
Over at Harry's Place, Marcus Laughton takes issue with a recent Polly Toynbee column linking obesity with inequality. In particularly, citing evidence from another blogger, he notes that there appears no relationship between inequality and obesity, with the most unequal societies in Latin America and Africa often the least obese, and with a handy little chart to show this.Well go figure, but the argument is obviously not about developing countries. Inequality in such countries often means going hungry, so it's not surprisingly the incidence of obesity is somewhat low. The argument, based on (amongst other things) access to cheap junk food, is clearly about rich countries.
Running the data only on what used to be the OECD, and now I think is the "core OECD", things look a little different.
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The relationship is certainly not perfect, but there does seem to be a weak one. It's somewhat skewed by the extremities, with the most unequal country having the most obese people (America, as Toynbee says) while the least unequal with the least obese people (Japan). The former obviously supports Toynbee's argument, while the latter probably doesn't.
But no-one was saying that there weren't other factors involved, as Japan's position implies. It is worth remembering that inequality data (and I imagine obesity data) is pretty inaccurate. And there has been published academic work which supports and refutes Toynbee's position. But let's deal with the argument, rather than a misrepresented one.
posted by Matthew @ 6/01/2004 09:24:00 AM
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