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  • Original Article
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Weight and place: a multilevel cross-sectional survey of area-level social disadvantage and overweight/obesity in Australia

International Journal of Obesity volume 30, pages 281–287 (2006)Cite this article

Abstract

Objective:

To estimate variation between small areas in adult body mass index (BMI), and assess the importance of area level socioeconomic disadvantage in predicting BMI.

Methods:

We identified all census collector districts (CCDs) in the 20 innermost Local Government Areas in metropolitan Melbourne, Australia, and ranked them by the percentage of low income households (<$400/week). In all, 50 CCDs were randomly selected from the least, middle and most disadvantaged septiles of the ranked list and 4913 residents (61.4% participation rate) completed one of two surveys. Multilevel linear regression was used to estimate area level variance in BMI and the importance of area level socioeconomic disadvantage in predicting BMI.

Results:

There were significant variations in BMI between CCDs for women, even after adjustment for individual and area SES (P=0.012); significant area variation was not found for men. Living in the most versus least disadvantaged areas was associated with an average difference in BMI of 1.08 kg/m2 (95% CI: 0.48–1.68 kg/m2) for women, and of 0.93 kg/m2 (95% CI: 0.32–1.55 kg/m2) for men. Living in the mid versus least disadvantaged areas were associated with an average difference in BMI of 0.67 kg/m2 (95% CI: 0.09–1.26 kg/m2) for women, and 0.43 kg/m2 for men (95% CI: −0.16–1.01).

Conclusion:

These findings suggest that area disadvantage is an important predictor of adult BMI, and support the need to focus on improving local environments to reduce socioeconomic inequalities in overweight and obesity.

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Acknowledgements

The project was funded by the Victorian Health Promotion Foundation. The second author is supported by a Victorian Health Promotion Foundation (VicHealth) Senior Research Fellowship. The fourth and fifth authors are supported by National Health and Medical Research Council/National Heart Foundation Career Development Awards.

We are grateful to all staff that contributed to the project, and are particularly grateful to Ms Emma Rawlings for her work on the survey administration, data collection and cleaning.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Australian Research Centre in Sex, Health and Society, La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia

    T King & A M Kavanagh

  2. Key Centre for Women's Health in Society, School of Population Health, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia

    T King & A M Kavanagh

  3. Monash Institute of Health Services Research, Monash University, Melbourne, Australia

    D Jolley

  4. School of Public Health, Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Australia

    G Turrell

  5. Centre for Physical Activity and Nutrition Research School Exercise and Nutrition Sciences, Deakin University, Victoria, Australia

    D Crawford

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  1. T King
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  2. A M Kavanagh
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  3. D Jolley
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  4. G Turrell
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  5. D Crawford
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to A M Kavanagh.

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The project was approved by the La Trobe University Human Ethics Committee.

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King, T., Kavanagh, A., Jolley, D. et al. Weight and place: a multilevel cross-sectional survey of area-level social disadvantage and overweight/obesity in Australia. Int J Obes 30, 281–287 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1038/sj.ijo.0803176

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/sj.ijo.0803176

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