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Educational Gradient in Body Mass Index Trajectories across Cohorts of Indonesian Adults

Lilipramawanty Liwin, School of Demography- Australian National University

Globally, the number of obese adults has increased rapidly in many developing countries. The association between education and inequality in overweight/obesity across populations are highly studied. However, educational attainment can have a different association with BMI change at different levels of economic development, and these associations may vary by period and cohort. This study aims to provide evidence on the shifting of educational gradients in mean BMI of the Indonesian population using a growth curve approach on five waves of the Indonesia Family Life Survey. Over successive cohorts, the educational patterning of the BMI gradient has shifted. In older generations, higher educational attainment was associated with higher BMI, but the gap between educational groups has shrunk in more recently-born cohorts. Mean BMI of lower educational groups is catching up with that of the tertiary educated, leading to an increased risk of overweight/obesity among low educated people. Having tertiary education lowers the risk of weight gain in women, but not in men. This phenomena suggest that the ongoing nutritional transition in Indonesia is leading to a shifting of educational gradients in mean BMI over time.

Keywords: Health and morbidity, Longitudinal studies, Inequality, Multi-level modeling

See paper.

  Presented in Session 137. Nutritional Status and its Health and Socioeconomic Effects in Asia