우리나라 비만인구 증가 원인의 관련요인 분석: 경제학적 고찰

Abstract

The recent growth of obesity in most countries has generated world-widely enormous popular and policy concerns. This paper examines, in view of an economics perspective, the causes of rising obesity in Korea. There are several possible hypotheses for explaining rise in obesity prevalence in Korea, which include technologically induced rise in obesity, sedentary life-style patterns caused by socio-economic changes, time-preference and self-control problem. Based on the empirical results, we found that socio- economic factors such as rising female employment rate, increasing share of sedentary jobs, decreasing physical activities, relative price changes of fresh and processed food products, and increasing share of food-away-from home in the total food expenditure, through affecting calorie consumption and expenditure, has contributed to rising obesity rate in Korea.