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Li, Wen

Community Development and Applied Economics

2013

MS

While childhood overweight and obesity has emerged as a critical public health issue around the world, there are very limited assessments on the situation in developing nations like China and even less information on the factors that have contributed to the problem. The major purpose of this thesis is to collect primary data from middle school students through a survey in Shaanxi Province in Northwest China and use the data to identify potential risk factors for childhood overweight and obesity and quantify each factor's impact on the odds to be overweight or obese.
Specifically, with detailed data from a total of2138 students and their parents, this study first presents an assessment of the overweight and obese situation among middle school students based on age and gender specific definitions for overweight and obesity, then identifies factors in five major groups (physical activities, food and nutrition, demographic factors, parental factors, an.d fast food factors) that may be associated with overweight and obesity and quantities their impacts on the odds to be overweight or obese throught a binary logistical regression analysis, and finally discusses some educational and public policy implications for slowing down the growth in childhood overeight and obesity in China.
While the assessment indicates that the overweight rate, including obesity, was 13.4% in urban areas and 3.2% in rural areas, the empirical results from the logistical regression analysis suggest that the odds to be overweight are affected by physical activities, food and nutrition, demographic factors, parental factors, and fast food factors. Based on the empirical findings, this thesis has derived some policy implications and recommendations as well as suggestions for further research.