Body Mass Index and the measurement of obesity

David Madden (david.madden@ucd.ie)

No 200627, Working Papers from School of Economics, University College Dublin

Abstract: This paper proposes a new method of measuring obesity using Body Mass Index (BMI) data. Conventional measures which simply count the number of individuals with BMI in excess of an upper limit ignore the extent by which individuals exceed BMI limits and also the increased risk ratios for various conditions associated very high levels of BMI. This paper suggests that measures currently used in the poverty literature can be usefully applied to measure obesity and provide us with measures which may be more relevant from a policy perspective. The approach is applied to data for Ireland.

Keywords: Obesity; Body Mass Index; Body mass index; Obesity--Statistics (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I12 I31 I32 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2006-12
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

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http://hdl.handle.net/10197/782 First version, 2006 (application/pdf)

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