Texas A&M University, 2124 TAMU, College Station, TX 77843-2124, USA.
Ethn Health. 2012;17(5):493-511. doi: 10.1080/13557858.2012.661407. Epub 2012 Feb 24.
Obesity prevalence is unequally distributed across gender and ethnic group in Malaysia. In this paper, we examine the role of socioeconomic inequality in explaining these disparities.
The body mass index (BMI) distributions of Malays and Chinese, the two largest ethnic groups in Malaysia, are estimated through the use of quantile regression. The differences in the BMI distributions are then decomposed into two parts: attributable to differences in socioeconomic endowments and attributable to differences in responses to endowments.
For both males and females, the BMI distribution of Malays is shifted toward the right of the distribution of Chinese, i.e., Malays exhibit higher obesity rates. In the lower 75% of the distribution, differences in socioeconomic endowments explain none of this difference. At the 90th percentile, differences in socioeconomic endowments account for no more than 30% of the difference in BMI between ethnic groups.
Our results demonstrate that the higher levels of income and education that accrue with economic development will likely not eliminate obesity inequality. This leads us to conclude that reduction of obesity inequality, as well the overall level of obesity, requires increased efforts to alter the lifestyle behaviors of Malaysians.
马来西亚的性别和族裔群体之间存在着不均衡的肥胖流行率。本文旨在探讨社会经济不平等在解释这些差异中的作用。
通过使用分位数回归估计马来西亚两个最大族裔马来族和华族的体重指数（BMI）分布。然后将 BMI 分布的差异分解为两部分：一部分归因于社会经济禀赋的差异，另一部分归因于对禀赋的反应差异。
对于男性和女性，马来族的 BMI 分布都向右偏移，即马来族的肥胖率更高。在分布的前 75%，社会经济禀赋的差异并不能解释这种差异。在第 90 百分位数，社会经济禀赋的差异仅占族裔间 BMI 差异的 30%左右。
我们的研究结果表明，随着经济发展而获得的更高收入和教育水平可能不会消除肥胖不平等。这使我们得出结论，减少肥胖不平等以及整体肥胖水平需要加大努力改变马来西亚人的生活方式行为。
