March 26, 2007 at 9:28 am (Food/Agriculture, Health, OECD, Statistic)
[note: The BMI classification may not be suitable for all ethnic groups, who may have equivalent levels of risk at lower BMI (for example, Asians) or higher BMI.]
Low overweight (25 < BMI < 30) prevalence: France, Switzerland.
High overweight prevalence: Germany, Australia, Portugal, Austria, United Kingdom.
Low obesity (BMI > 30) prevalence: Switzerland, Norway, Italy.
High obesity prevalence: United States.
United States has unbelievably high percentage of people who is obese, as high as 30.6%. As far as the food item concern, American eats a lot of chicken meat (113.7 g/day), fruits (28.6 g/day), but not on bovine or pig meat compared to other countries.
Among the listed factors, bovine or cow related meat has relatively strong positive correlation (Rsquare= 0.134) on the prevalence of obesity. On theother hand, chicken meat intake has very strong positive correlation on the prevalence of overweight people, the rsquare as 0.580 (1 is being perfect). However, the pig meat intake shows negative correlation on the prevalence of overweight. May be it has something to do with the way the people prepare chicken or pig meat as meal?
sources:
1) OECD on Overweight and Obesity Prevalence
2) FAO on Food Intake
Comments
March 26, 2007 at 4:57 am (Health, Malaysia, OECD, Social, Statistic)
Japan has the lowest fertility rate among all the OECD countries, follow closely by Spain and Italy. Malaysia as a developing country enjoy high fertility rate. As for birth rates, Malaysia again has the highest number of new born babies per year but Germany is facing a very low number: 8.25. In 2007, as an initiative to boost the birth rate, German government is giving 25,200 Euros to the parents of new born babies (news: BBC here).
On average, OECD countries (exclude Malaysia) fertility rate is 1.64 and birth rate is 10.75. If the replacement fertility rates (the total fertility rate at which women would have only enough children to replace themselves and their partner) is set as 2.1 for developed country, all of the OECD countries will be facing a challenge in the future: there will be more old people than the young ones.
National income and contraceptive prevalence are used to study their influence on fertility and birth rates. National income is consistently showing moderate strong negative relationship on both effects: the higher income, the less likely people wants to give birth.
On the other hand, does national income have any influence on contraceptive prevalence? Yes, there is a postive and moderate strong relationship (Rsquare=0.208) too: the higher income the people earn, the more likely (higher percentage) the people will practise contraceptive method. However there are some exceptions like Austria, Italy and Japan.
sources:
1) WHO on Contraceptive Prevalence, Fertility rates
2) Wikipedia on Birth rates
3) OECD on National Income
4 Comments
micpohling