Secular trends of obesity prevalence in C hinese children from 1985 to 2010: Urban–rural disparity

Objective: To examine the trend of urban–rural disparity in obesity prevalence among Chinese children from 1985 to 2010.
Methods: The data were from five cross‐sectional surveys (1985, 1995, 2000, 2005, and 2010) of Chinese National Surveys on Students' Constitution and Health. Logistic regression was used to estimate the prevalence odds ratio (POR) of urban–rural areas for obesity prevalence in different surveys.
Results: The standardized prevalence of obesity in Chinese children increased rapidly from 0.1% in 1985 to 5.0% in 2010, and significant differences were found between two adjacent surveys in most of the age subgroups (P  < 0.01). Although the obesity prevalence was significantly higher in urban than in rural children of all age subgroups at different survey points, the changing pace was faster in rural than in urban areas from 1995 to 2010. The PORs had increased in 1995 in most age subgroups and then began to decline in all age subgroups after 1995.
Conclusions: The gradually decreasing urban–rural disparity suggests that the obesity prevalence in rural areas would contribute to a growing proportion of obese children. Therefore, rural children should be included in obesity prevention efforts even though obesity rates are still lower in rural than in urban areas.