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Gaining on the poor.

From the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, I'm Ira Dreyfuss with HHS HealthBeat.

People who are poorer also have tended to be fatter -- in America, being thinner has been a mark of higher social status. It's been that way for decades. But new research says this is changing � and not in a good way. Instead of the poor getting thinner, the rich are getting fatter. Researcher Jennifer Robinson of the University of Iowa examined data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention:

"The first national survey we looked at in the 1970s showed that about 23 percent of people in the lowest income group were obese, and only 10 percent were obese in the highest income group. Now, when we looked again in the 2001 survey, everyone was about 30 percent."

Robinson says weight gains have expanded faster among people who are not poor, and she does not know why. She suspects it's due to more opportunities to sit and surf the Web and do other things that gain more calories while burning fewer.

Learn more at www.hhs.gov.

HHS HealthBeat is a production of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. I'm Ira Dreyfuss.

Last revised: August 24, 2005

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