Overnutrition in childhood and adolescence, including overweight and obesity, can lead to lifelong health challenges. Obesity in adolescence specifically is associated with an increased risk of cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes and certain cancers in adulthood, including leukemia, Hodgkin's disease, colorectal cancer and breast cancer. Among children and adolescents, being overweight may also negatively impact mental health and quality of life, increasing the risk for low self-esteem and bullying, though these risks may differ across cultures.
Age-standardized, global data on the share of school-age children and adolescents who meet the criteria for obesity are unavailable, providing insufficient data to make a global progress assessment. However, in most countries with available data, trends among boys and girls have been rising steadily over the past two decades. In Brazil, for instance, obesity prevalence in girls and boys more than doubled between 2000 and 2022, rising steadily from 4.9% to 14% and 6.2% to 17%, respectively. Obesity prevalence in school aged children was notably high — above 25% — in 2022 in the Bahamas, Chile, Qatar and several countries in Oceania. For the vast majority of countries, obesity rates are moving in the wrong direction, impeding progress toward the goal set in 2013 to halt the rise in obesity by 2025.
In a few countries, obesity prevalence among school-age boys and girls declined slightly between 2018 and 2022, including in France, Greece, Italy and Portugal. In a few others, it declined for only girls (Belgium, Ireland) or boys (Canada, Kyrgyzstan, Poland, Russia, South Africa). More research is needed to explore insights from these countries’ successful reductions.
Many factors contribute to an increased likelihood of obesity, including food environments that encourage unhealthy consumption patterns, sedentary lifestyles and other behavioral patterns, socioeconomic factors, genetic predisposition and more. Several indicators explored on this platform may help to promote a healthier food environment as one step toward reducing obesity prevalence, including increasing food security and the affordability of healthy diets, reducing marketing of unhealthy foods to children and increasing consumers' ability to prepare healthy foods.