Overweight Male in South Australia

Running head: OVERWEIGHT MALE IN SOUTH AUSTRALIA
OVERWEIGHT MALE IN SOUTH AUSTRALIA
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1OVERWEIGHT MALE IN SOUTH AUSTRALIA
The word ‘Overweight’ can be used in two different meaning. One is in the layman
term which is an imperfect way of saying that someone is heavy. Another is a more precise
way in which overweight signifies a state which is in between the normal weight and obese
state. Commonly, in scientific and medical sector overweight is determined in terms Body
Mass Index or BMI. Body Mass Index is generally measured by dividing an individual’s
weight in Kg by that individual’s height in meters. Body Mass Index or BMI generally
signifies the total fat content of an individual’s body. In case of male, a Body Mass Index or
BMI higher than 27.8 is generally considers as overweight (Abarca-Gómez et al., 2017).
According to the Australian government’s statistics it has been reported that the
region of South Australia is one of the fattest region among all of Australia (NewsComAu,
2019). It has also reported the fact that South Australia has one of the largest proportion of
overweight Australians amongst them. According to the Australian Institute of Health and
Welfare, the maximum overweight people are reside in the area of the outside the cities and
these people are much more prone to smoking compared to the people living in the cities
(NewsComAu, 2019). Various studies have reported the fact that there is a significant link
between overweight and socio- economic status of an individual. Hence, in this article, the
state of the overweight male in South Australia will be discussed in the light of their socio
economic status (Mihrshahi et al., 2018). The socio economic status data was retrieved from
the Public Health Information Development Unit (PHIDU) official website
(Phidu.torrens.edu.au, 2019).
The socio economic data with regard to overweight male was retrieved from the
PHIDU website and presented in the Figure 1 below. From the Figure 1, it can be seen that
the number of participants were divided in to five quintile based on their socio economic
status (X axis). In the figure, the socio economic status was presented on basis of higher to
lower socio economic status. Therefore, number one denotes the highest socio economic

2OVERWEIGHT MALE IN SOUTH AUSTRALIA
status while number five denotes the lowest socio economic status. The socio economic data
were corresponds with the rate of overweight male per 100. Anyone who was above the age
of 18 years old was considered as an adult male (Phidu.torrens.edu.au, 2019).
Figure 1: Socio economic status with regard to rate of overweight male per 100 in South
Australia (Source: Phidu.torrens.edu.au, 2019).
This was presented in the Y Axis. From the data presented in the Figure 1, a
downward trend can be observed from the highest socio economic group to lowest socio
economic with exception in the 4th lowest socio economic group. The trend is that the
occurrence of overweight per 100 male is highest in the highest socio economic group with a
value of 49.4 and it is lowest in the lowest socio economic group with a value of 39.9. The
declining trend has been observed for all the four socio economic group with the exception of
the quintile number four. Thus, we can assume that the value presented in the quintile number
4 is just an aberration of the trend and not the actual trend (Phidu.torrens.edu.au, 2019).
Hence, it can be assumed that the occurrence of the overweight male is higher in higher
socio- economic group. This assumption is also backed up by the inequality ratio which can