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Global Obesity Patterns, an Introduction

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International Handbook of the Demography of Obesity

Part of the book series: International Handbooks of Population ((IHOP,volume 12))

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Abstract

A steady rise in obesity prevalence over several decades has led to considerable scholarly interest in its causes and consequences. Demographers have contributed a great deal to our understanding of obesity and its associated mechanisms via formal demographic analyses and population studies. Accordingly, demographers have examined variations within and across populations, established its link to mortality and morbidity, provided forecasts and projections of future levels, and studied how its presence is variable by demographic characteristics. This chapter begins with a discussion of how the demographic study of obesity has developed over time. Next, it describes key trends in global patterns of obesity. It also offers a summary of major contributions made by demographers and an overview of the topics covered in this Handbook. Finally, the chapter describes the tools and methodological approaches used by demographers of obesity.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Lambert Adolphe Jacques Quetelet (1796–1874) was an astronomer, mathematician, statistician, and sociologist. He is credited with the development of the science of anthropometry, or the measurement of the human individual, and the influential construction of life tables (Siegel & Swanson, 2004). The Quetelet Index was first described in 1832, and was later coined as the Body Mass Index in 1972 by Ancel Keys (Eknoyan, 2008).

  2. 2.

    Nationally representative datasets on obesity include: the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS), the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES), the Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System (YRBSS), and the National Health Interview Survey (NHIS). The National Collaborative on Childhood Obesity also maintains information on publicly available data sets (Catalogue of Surveillance Systems, 2022).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Sociology, University of Texas at San Antonio, San Antonio, TX, USA

    Ginny Garcia-Alexander

  2. Department of Sociology, Texas A & M University, College Station, TX, USA

    Dudley L. Poston Jr.

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  1. Ginny Garcia-Alexander
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Correspondence to Ginny Garcia-Alexander .

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  1. Department of Sociology, University of Texas at San Antonio, San Antonio, TX, USA

    Ginny Garcia-Alexander

  2. Department of Sociology, Texas A & M University, College Station, TX, USA

    Dudley L. Poston, Jr.

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Garcia-Alexander, G., Poston, D.L. (2022). Global Obesity Patterns, an Introduction. In: Garcia-Alexander, G., Poston, Jr., D.L. (eds) International Handbook of the Demography of Obesity. International Handbooks of Population, vol 12. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-10936-2_1

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