Obesity rate differences between U.S. and Canadian women and between U.S. and Canadian men: Findings from the Joint Canada/United States Survey of Health - ARCHIVED

This study investigates factors associated with obesity in Canada and the U.S., using data from the 2002-03 Joint Canada/United States Survey of Health, a telephone survey conducted jointly by Statistics Canada and the U.S. National Center for Health Statistics. Essentially the same questionnaire was administered in both countries at the same time, yielding a data set that provided unprecedented comparability of national estimates from the two countries. Analysis of empirical distributions of body mass index (BMI) show that American women are appreciably heavier than Canadian women, whereas the distributions of BMI are almost identical for American men and Canadian men. Factors are investigated that may account for the differences between women.