Page 76 - IJPS-8-1

International Journal of

Population Studies

RESEARCH ARTICLE
Disaggregating the longitudinal association

between urbanization and body weight in
Chinese adults over 1991 – 2015

Hongwei Xu*

Department of Sociology, CUNY-Queens College, New York, United States

Abstract

Urbanization is widely viewed as a major contextual force behind the rising
prevalence of overweight and obese people in developing countries. Research
in China often conflates between-community difference and within-community
change - two separate processes of urbanization that are related to body weight
gain. Capitalizing on longitudinal and multilevel data from the 1991 to 2015 China
Health and Nutrition Survey, the present study disaggregated the association
between change in a community-level urbanicity index and change in individual-
level body weight status over time in Chinese adults aged 18–65 years. A positive
longitudinal relationship was confirmed between urbanicity and body weight in
men, but varied in women by the choice of anthropometric measure. However,
for both men and women, such an overall association was largely driven by
preexisting between-community differences in the level of urbanization rather
than an intrinsic within-community urbanization process. This pattern is robust
*Corresponding author: against two different disaggregation methods. These findings together confirm the
Hongwei Xu, inadequate simplicity of the conventional model of community effects on health
(hongwei.xu@qc.cuny.edu) and nutrition.
Citation: Xu, H. (2022).
Disaggregating the longitudinal
association between urbanization and Keywords: Community; Overweight; Obesity
body weight in Chinese adults over
1991–2015. International Journal of
Population Studies, 8(1):70-82.
https://doi.org/10.36922/ijps.v8i1.334 1. Introduction
Received: March 9, 2022
Being overweight or obese has raised a public health concern for the Chinese population
Accepted: August 16, 2022
(Ng et al., 2014). According to disease surveillance data collected by the Chinese Center
Published Online: September 8, 2022 for Disease Control and Prevention, the overweight rate among Chinese adults aged
Copyright: © 2022 Author(s). 18 years and older nearly doubled from 16.4% in 1992 to 30.1% in 2012, and the obese
This is an Open Access article rate more than tripled from 3.6% to 11.9% during the same period (Chinese CDC, 2015;
distributed under the terms of the
Creative Commons Attribution Wang, 2005). Reasons for population-level weight gain in China are multifaceted and
License, permitting distribution, the subject of considerable debate among scholars. Nonetheless, prior research suggests
and reproduction in any medium,
provided the original work is that rising incomes, higher-fat diets, reduced physical activity, and cultural ideals
properly cited. regarding desirable weight all play a role. Because higher levels of urbanization are likely
Publisher’s Note: AccScience to include a shift from occupations requiring strenuous physical activities to those with
Publishing remains neutral with more sedentary activities, an increase in automotive use for job commuting and daily
regard to jurisdictional claims in
published maps and institutional activities, more affordable food markets for meat and cooking oil, and easier access to
affiliations. Western fast-food restaurants, many weight-gain-related changes in China are thought

Volume 8 Issue 1 (2022) 70 https://doi.org/10.36922/ijps.v8i1.334