Obesity
Ethnic differences
The likelihood of being obese varies considerably by ethnicity.
Rate ratios provide a useful comparison between the prevalence of obesity within a single ethnic group and the prevalence across the total population. They show that the likelihood of being obese varies considerably by ethnicity. In 2006/07, Asian and European young people were slightly less likely to be obese than the population as a whole, Māori young people were slightly more likely to be, and Pacific young people were considerably more likely to be.
Obesity (age-standardised rate ratio by ethnicity) among young people aged 15 to 24, 2006/07
Source: Ministry of Health, New Zealand Health Survey 2006/07. This total-response ethnicity data is age-standardised to allow comparisons between years, and rates thus differ slightly from crude rates. The horizontal gridline at 1.00 represents the total population against which comparative rate ratios are calculated. Where lines extending from datapoints do not cross the 1.00 gridline, this indicates a significant difference between the prevalence of obesity within the ethnic population compared to the total population.
Note
We encourage you to be cautious about drawing conclusions from comparisons between ethnic groups. Apparent differences (in unadjusted data) between ethnic groups can often be explained by factors other than ethnicity per se, such as the different age, sex, geographical and socioeconomic distributions of different ethnic populations. In addition, datasets vary in the way that they collect and record ethnicity data.
