Explained and unexplained racial and regional inequality in obesity prevalence in the United States

ABSTRACT

Objective: There are substantial racial and regional disparities in obesity prevalence in the United States. This study partitioned the mean Body Mass Index (BMI) and obesity prevalence rate gaps between non-Hispanic blacks and non-Hispanic whites into the portion attributable to observable obesity risk factors and the remaining portion attributable to unobservable factors at the national and the state levels in the United States (U.S.) in 2010.

Design: This study used a simulated micro-population dataset combining common information from the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System and the U.S. Census data to obtain a reliable, large sample representing the adult populations at the national and state levels. It then applied a reweighting decomposition method to decompose the black-white mean BMI and obesity prevalence disparities at the national and state levels into the portion attributable to the differences in distribution of observable obesity risk factors and the remaining portion unexplainable with risk factors.

Results: We found that the observable differences in distribution of known obesity risk factors explain 18.5% of the mean BMI difference and 20.6% of obesity prevalence disparities between non-Hispanic blacks and non-Hispanic whites. There were substantial variations in how much the differences in distribution of known obesity risk factors can explain black-white gaps in mean BMI (−67.7% to 833.6%) and obesity prevalence (−278.5% to 340.3%) at the state level.

Conclusion: The results from this study demonstrate that known obesity risk factors explain a small proportion of the racial, ethnic and between-state disparities in obesity prevalence in the United States. Future etiologic studies are required to further understand the causal factors underlying obesity and racial, ethnic and geographic disparities.

KEYWORDS:

• Obesity
• racial health disparities
• decomposition techniques
• spatial microsimulation
• Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS)
• obesity interventions

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Key messages

1. Known individual and contextual obesity risk factors explained 18.5% of the mean BMI and 20.6% of the obesity prevalence gaps between non-Hispanic blacks and non-Hispanic whites at the national level in the United States.

2. The combined effects of all known individual and contextual level obesity risk factors on racial gaps in the mean BMI and the obesity prevalence substantially varied by states.

3. Future studies are needed to further explain racial and geographic gaps in mean BMI and obesity prevalence.

Additional information

Funding

This study was partially supported by the Dissertation Completion Fellowship Program, Graduate School at Michigan State University.