Gender Differences and Socioeconomic Status in Relation to Overweight among Older Korean People Jin-Won Noh 1 , Minkyung Jo 2 , Taewook Huh 3 , Jooyoung Cheon 4 , Young Dae Kwon 5 * 1 Department of Healthcare Management, Eulji University, Seongnam, Korea, 2 Graduate School of Public Health, Korea University, Seoul, Korea, 3 Strategy Department for Women-friendly Policy, Korean Women’s Development Institute, Seoul, Korea, 4 School of Nursing, University of Maryland, Baltimore, Maryland, United States of America, 5 Department of Humanities and Social Medicine, College of Medicine and Catholic Institute for Healthcare Management, the Catholic University of Korea, Seoul, Korea Abstract Background: The ever-increasing older population and its association with serious overweight problems have garnered much attention. The correlation between being overweight and socioeconomic status factors could be helpful for understanding the inequalities among the overweight population. We examined the correlation between being overweight and some key variables, such as demographics, socioeconomic status, general health status, and health behavior in a large sample of older individuals, by each gender. Methods: We used data from the 2008 Korean Longitudinal Study of Aging and it included 8,157 participants who were 45 years or older. To understand the relationship between the overweight participants in accordance to demographic and socioeconomic characteristics, health status, and health behaviors, a weighted chi-square test and logistic regression analysis were conducted by separating variables related to overweight, according to the genders. Results: The number of people in the normal group was 6,347 (77.8%), while the people who were considered overweight were 1,810 (22.2%). Women (n = 4,583) constituted 52.7% of the subject, 24.9% of whom were classified as overweight. Meanwhile, 20.6% of the 47.3% (n = 3,574) of the sample who were men were classified as overweight. Participants between the ages of 45 and 64 with chronic diseases were more likely to be overweight. Men in the 4th quartile of household income were more likely to be overweight than those who were in the 1st quartile, in contrast, while unemployed women with lower education levels and urban residents were at greater risk for being overweight. Conclusions: Among the men, health status and health behavior appeared to show a correlation with being overweight; however, among women, socioeconomic status factors were strongly related to being overweight. These findings appear to support the association of gender-specifics with the prevalence of being overweight. Citation: Noh J-W, Jo M, Huh T, Cheon J, Kwon YD (2014) Gender Differences and Socioeconomic Status in Relation to Overweight among Older Korean People. PLoS ONE 9(5): e97990. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0097990 Editor: C. Mary Schooling, CUNY, United States of America Received August 11, 2013; Accepted April 27, 2014; Published May 16, 2014 Copyright: ß 2014 Noh et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Funding: The authors have no support or funding to report. Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist. * E-mail: snukyd1@naver.com Introduction The increasing trend of overweight individuals has become a major health issue over the past several decades [1]. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), it was estimated that more than 1.4 billion adults were overweight in 2008, and among them, at least 500 million were obese. This was an increase of over 200% since 1980 [1]. South Korea is one of the fastest industrialized countries. The prevalence of overweight among Koreans has increased during the past several decades due to socioeconomic development and the increase in life expectancy [2,3]. According to the Korea National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey data, the prevalence of overweight [body mass index (BMI), 25.0–29.9 kg/m 2 ] increased from 26.7% in 1998 to 30.9% in 2009. Since Sobal and Stunkard’s exhaustive review comparing the association between socioeconomic status (SES) and overweight [4], it was found that there may be a correlation between being overweight and economic development. There is an inverse association between overweight and SES among women in developed societies, whereas the association is direct in developing countries [5–7]. These findings stress significant gender differences in the association of overweight prevalence with SES factors [7]. SES factors, such as education level, income, and employment status, have a differential effect on body weight and fat distribution [8,9]. Generally, people who were considered to have lower education were more highly associated with being overweight [10– 12]. Some studies report that women with a lower education level are more likely to have a significantly higher BMI than compared to those with a higher education levels, even though there are no significant differences that were found in men [8,13,14]. Higher income was also found to have an association with a higher risk of being overweight [10]. Men with higher income typically have a greater BMI and a higher risk of being overweight than those who earn less income [8,15,16]. In contrast, for women, the prevalence of being overweight increased with lower income [15,16]. Ball, PLOS ONE | www.plosone.org 1 May 2014 | Volume 9 | Issue 5 | e97990