The Socio-economic Gradient of Obesity in Ireland

Using the nationally representative SLAN datasets for 2002 and 2007 we calculate concentration indices for the incidence of obesity for men and women. We find higher concentration indices for women than for men in both years, but that the gap narrowed over time with the index rising for men but falling for women. A decomposition of the concentration index suggests that the greatest contributions to the index for both men and women come from own self-assessed health, third level education and equivalised income.