Measuring and Decomposing Socioeconomic Inequalities in Adult Obesity in Western Iran

Obesity is a considerable and growing public health concern worldwide. The present study aimed to quantify socioeconomic inequalities in adult obesity in western Iran. A total of 10 086 participants, aged 35-65 years, from the Ravansar Non-communicable Disease Cohort Study (2014-2016) were included in the study to examine socioeconomic inequalities in obesity. We defined obesity as a body mass index ≥30 kg/m2 . The concentration index and concentration curve were used to illustrate and measure wealth-related inequality in obesity. Additionally, we decomposed the concentration index to identify factors that explained wealth-related inequality in obesity. Overall, the prevalence of obesity in the total sample was 26.7%. The concentration index of obesity was 0.04; indicating that obesity was more concentrated among the rich (p