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Pediatrics

Time trends and factors in body mass index and obesity among children in China: 1997–2011

International Journal of Obesity volume 41, pages 964–970 (2017)Cite this article

Subjects

Abstract

Background:

Research on the shift in children's body mass index (BMI) distribution is limited and conditional mean models used in the previous research have limitations in capturing cross-distribution variations in effects. The objectives are to analyze the shift in Chinese children’s BMI distribution and to test the associations between BMI distribution and other factors.

Methods:

We analyzed data collected from children 7 to 17 years old from the China Health and Nutrition Survey (CHNS) conducted in 1997, 2000, 2004, 2006, 2009 and 2011, from 2814 participants with 6799 observations. Longitudinal quantile regression (QR) was used to explore the effect of several factors on BMI trends in 2015.

Results:

The BMI curves shift to the right in boys and girls, with the distributions becoming wider, indicating a higher proportion of children have become overweight. The 5th, 15th, 50th, 85th and 95th BMI percentile curves all shifted upward from 1997 to 2011, and the higher percentiles had greater increases. The prevalence of overweight and obesity increased in boys and girls between 1997 and 2011, from 6.5 to 15.5% in boys and from 4.6 to 10.4% in girls. Energy intake and parents’ BMI levels had a positive association with children’s BMI. Per capita income was positively associated with changes in BMI only at the upper percentiles of the BMI distributions in boys. Increased physical activity (PA) was associated with decreased BMI in girls.

Conclusions:

Children in China are becoming increasingly overweight. Energy intake, parental BMI, PA and early menarche age in girls are associated with elevated BMI in children.

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Acknowledgements

The research was supported in part by a research grant from the US National Institutes of Health (NIH, grant no.1U54hd070725), the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, and Office of Behavioral and Social Sciences Research. It is part of the collaboration project between the National Institute of Nutrition and Food Safety at the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention and the University at Buffalo, State University of New York. The content of the paper is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the funders. This research uses data from the CHNS. We thank the National Institute for Nutrition and Food Safety at the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, the Carolina Population Center at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and the US NIH (R01-HD30880, DK056350, R24 HD050924, and R01-HD38700) for financial support for the CHNS data collection and management.

Author contributions

HW and BZ contributed to the initial design of the analysis. HW and JZ contributed to the analysis. All authors contributed to the interpretation of data analysis results. HW wrote the first draft of the manuscript. HX, SD and YW revised the manuscript. YW led the effort receiving the NIH grant (1U54hd070725) that funded the international collaboration project and has provided some administrative support for developing the manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. National Institute for Nutrition and Health, Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Beijing, China

    H Wang, J Zhang & B Zhang

  2. Department of Epidemiology and Environmental Health, School of Public Health and Health Professions, University at Buffalo, State University of New York, Buffalo, NY, USA

    H Xue & Y Wang

  3. Department of Nutrition, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC, USA

    S Du

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  1. H Wang
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Correspondence to B Zhang.

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Wang, H., Xue, H., Du, S. et al. Time trends and factors in body mass index and obesity among children in China: 1997–2011. Int J Obes 41, 964–970 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/ijo.2017.53

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