Poverty Does Not Cause Obesity

Ryan McMaken
Mises Institute
Nov. 04, 2015

In a global perspective, there is no clear relationship between obesity and wealth. At middle- and high-income levels, diverse countries often display varying levels of obesity. At the very lowest levels of wealth, of course, there is a clear relationship between wealth and weight gain: extremely poor or war torn countries tend to have very low incidence of obesity because there simply is not enough food, or the economic supply chains have been destroyed and are unable to deliver food where it is demanded.

However, at levels of wealth above these low levels, cultural factors appear to be as important as wealth. For example, both Vietnam and Japan have an obesity rate of 3.5 in spite of a large difference in GDP per capita. Meanwhile, Greece, which is poorer than Japan, but richer than Vietnam, has an obesity rate almost eight times as high as both Asian countries (25.1 percent).

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