What determines obesity in oil-rich UAE? New evidence from survey data

Abstract

We conduct a survey on university undergraduate students and use the novel data set to investigate the possible determinants of overweight and obesity in the UAE. Our results indicate that being male, married, rich and non-national is associated with higher BMI and students with these features are in greater risk of overweight/obesity. For students originating from MENA countries, we find a positive effect for eating out, income and computer use.

Keywords:

• BMI
• obesity
• socioeconomic determinants
• UAE

JEL Classification:

• I19
• Q01

Acknowledgements

The authors thank the UAEU-CBE Summer Research Grant for the valuable financial assistance received. We also thank the following UAEU faculty members who assisted in our data collection: Emilie Routledge, Javaid Ali, Cesar Ortiz Moya, Osama Sweidan, Steve Kranz, Robert Zacca, Dorra Laribi, Louis Jaek, Tarek Elganzouri and Daniel Houlder. A special thanks goes to Muayad Khougali, who provided valuable research assistance.

Notes

¹ Data from UAE 2005 Census, Ministry of Economy.

² Socioeconomic status is defined in some studies as the education level, or income level or a composite index.

³ Also see Sobal and Stunkard (1989) for a review of earlier studies on the socioeconomic determinants.

⁴ For more details and information, the survey is available from the authors.

⁵ Results from ordered logit and logistic regressions for obesity are available from the authors.

⁶ The PC and children effects also hold for the ordered logistic regression.