More than 1 billion people have obesity, including 159 million young people, study estimates

STAT February 29, 2024
Elaine Chen

More than 1 billion people — or one in eight people worldwide — are now estimated to have obesity, a new study finds.

Obesity rates grew particularly fast among children and teens, quadrupling from 1990 to 2022, the latest year the analysis looked at, while rates among adults more than doubled. That comes to 159 million children and teens with obesity, and 879 million adults, according to the study, published Thursday in the Lancet and conducted by the NCD Risk Factor Collaboration, a group of researchers around the world studying noncommunicable diseases.

Obesity is flaring in low- and middle-income countries, the study found. Some of the biggest increases in youth obesity rates occurred in Polynesia and Micronesia and the Caribbean....

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