Obesity, overweight and socioeconomic conditions. The Argentinian CASE

Obesity has been classified by the World Health Organization as a worldwide epidemic. This issue is a growing field in economics due to pathologies associated with overweight, the significant impact on healthcare costs and consequent deterioration of welfare. This paper shows the analysis of the results from the National Survey of Risk Factors in order to identify the role of socioeconomic conditions of obesity and overweight based on panel data models. The results indicate that the income level and sedentary lifestyle have positively influenced obesity and overweight, whereas the education and medical coverage are not relevant when explaining the differences between provinces in overweight prevalence, but become significant in the obesity rates variation