Obesity Trends, Determinants and Policy Implications in Indonesia

Cornelia Roemling and Matin Qaim

No 126208, 2012 Conference, August 18-24, 2012, Foz do Iguacu, Brazil from International Association of Agricultural Economists

Abstract: Obesity is becoming a serious issue in many developing countries, with negative implications for economic growth and human wellbeing. While previous micro level studies on obesity have mostly used cross-section data, we analyze trends and determinants with panel data from Indonesia. Over the past 20 years, obesity has increased remarkably in Indonesia across all population groups, including rural and low income strata. The problem is particularly severe among women. Panel regressions confirm that changing food consumption patterns, coupled with decreasing physical activity, directly contribute to this trend. From a policy perspective, nutrition awareness and education campaigns, combined with programs to support leisure time exercise especially for women, seem to be most promising to contain the obesity pandemic.

Keywords: Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety; Health Economics and Policy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 30
Date: 2012
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (17)

Downloads: (external link)
https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/126208/files/IAAE-Roemling%20and%20Qaim.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ags:iaae12:126208

DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.126208

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in 2012 Conference, August 18-24, 2012, Foz do Iguacu, Brazil from International Association of Agricultural Economists Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by AgEcon Search ().