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Patterning of individual heterogeneity in body mass index: evidence from 57 low- and middle-income countries

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Abstract

Modeling variation at population level has become increasingly valued, but no clear application exists for modeling differential variation in health between individuals within a given population. We applied Goldstein’s method (in: Everrit, Howell (eds) Encyclopedia of statistics in behavioral science, Wiley, Hoboken, 2005) to model individual heterogeneity in body mass index (BMI) as a function of basic sociodemographic characteristics, each independently and jointly. Our analytic sample consisted of 643,315 non-pregnant women aged 15–49 years pooled from the latest Demographic Health Surveys (rounds V, VI, or VII; years 2005–2014) across 57 low- and middle-income countries. Individual variability in BMI ranged from 9.8 (95% CI: 9.8, 9.9) for the youngest to 23.2 (95% CI: 22.9, 23.5) for the oldest age group; 14.2 (95% CI: 14.1, 14.3) for those with no formal education to 19.7 (95% CI: 19.5, 19.9) for those who have completed higher education; and 13.6 (95% CI: 13.5, 13.7) for the poorest quintile to 20.1 (95% CI: 20.0, 20.2) for the wealthiest quintile group. Moreover, variability in BMI by age was also different for different socioeconomic groups. Empirically testing the fundamental assumption of constant variance and identifying groups with systematically large differentials in health experiences have important implications for reducing health disparity.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences, Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston, MA, USA

    Rockli Kim, Ichiro Kawachi & Sankaran Venkata Subramanian

  2. Department of Biostatistics, Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston, MA, USA

    Brent Andrew Coull

  3. Population Health and Geography, Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies, 9 Bow Street, Cambridge, MA, 02138, USA

    Sankaran Venkata Subramanian

Authors
  1. Rockli Kim
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  2. Ichiro Kawachi
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  4. Sankaran Venkata Subramanian
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Correspondence to Sankaran Venkata Subramanian.

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The study was reviewed by Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health Institutional Review Board and was considered exempt from full review because the study was based on an anonymous public use data set with no identifiable information on the study participants.

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Kim, R., Kawachi, I., Coull, B.A. et al. Patterning of individual heterogeneity in body mass index: evidence from 57 low- and middle-income countries. Eur J Epidemiol 33, 741–750 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10654-018-0355-2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10654-018-0355-2

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