An expanding world

By The Economist online

How mens' waistlines have grown since 1980

RISING levels of obesity are bad news for people and health-care budgets, but they also correlate with good things such as rising economic wealth. The three maps below, which are drawn from a new global study led by Professor Majid Ezzati of Imperial College, London, and published in the Lancet, show that, Polynesia aside, obesity was a rich-world phenomenon in 1980. By 2008 the rich world had itself expanded, bringing obesity to groups within countries that were previously considered poor, such as Brazil and South Africa. During that period, the prevalence rate of obesity among men doubled to nearly 10%. One country has stubbornly resisted this trend. For all its dynamism since India opened up its economy in 1990, its men have on average become even thinner. The study suggests that Congo is the thinnest country in the world, and Nauru the fattest. Imperial College's own map is here.