Overview

Abstract (English)

This study explores adult Canadians weight movements among different levels of the BMI, for example, from normal to overweight or to obese levels. By applying Markov chain analysis to the longitudinal National Population Healthy Survey (NPHS), the BMI shift patterns of Canadian adults in the period from 1994/95 and 2006/07 are exposed. The estimation results show that the BMI shift patterns in all subperiods exhibit a positive trend indicating that the number of people who move from normal or overweight to obese exceeds the number of people moving in the opposite direction. Stationarity tests show that the BMI shifts for physically moderately active men and women are stationary and ergodic. In the long run, if no intervention is taken to prevent or reduce obesity, the prevalence of obesity for Canadian men and women who are physically moderately active will be 29.61% and 23.37% respectively. Several policy recommendations emerge naturally from the results of this study: first, effort to prevent the occurrence of new obese cases seems to be much more e¤ective than e¤ort to reduce the number of existing obese people; second, health policies for reducing obesity should focus more on the physically inactive people and provide incentives for them to be more physically active; and third, the most effective and urgent way to control obesity is to change existing diet and diet behavior.

Abstract (French)

Please note that abstracts only appear in the language of the publication and might not have a translation.