Association of obesity with socioeconomic status among adults of ages 18 to 80 years in rural Northwest China

BACKGROUND Understanding social disparities in obesity are presently an essential element in establishing public health priorities. However, the association between socioeconomic status (SES) and obesity has not been assessed in rural Northwest China. This study aims to explore the effect of SES on overweight/obesity and abdominal obesity by gender and age in rural Northwest China. METHODS A total of 3030 participants between the ages of 18 to 80 years from rural Hanzhong, Shaanxi province, Northwest China were enrolled in our study using a two-level stratified random cluster sampling technique. Adjusted odds ratio (AOR) were used to assess the relationship between socioeconomic status and obesity after controlling for confounding factors using logistic regression. RESULTS Our results indicated that the prevalence of abdominal obesity (38.8%) was the highest in rural Northwest China when compared with overweight (27.8%) and obesity (5.7%). When adjusting for possible risk factors, there were significant gender disparities in SES-obesity association. In men, the likelihoods of overweight/obesity and abdominal obesity were higher in the high SES groups when compared to the low SES groups. However, women with a high level of education were less likely to have overweight/obesity (AOR:0.78, 95% CI: 0.62, 0.98) than their counterparts with a low level of education. After the inclusion of multiple lifestyle factors, we still observed a strong positive association between age and obesity in the population. CONCLUSIONS Both gender and age differences in SES-obesity association were clearly observed in our study. Therefore, interventional measures should be employed in rural Northwest China to reduce the obesity epidemic that specifically takes into account gender and age differences.