BMC Public Health 2009, 9:465 http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2458/9/465 Table 1: Description of the Urban Sample 1 Variables Time lapse (between survey 1 and survey 2) Mean (Standard deviation) Education None Primary Secondary+ Working status Not working Working Age 15-19 20-24 25-29 30-34 35+ Marital status Never married Currently married Other Parity <2 2-3 4-5 6+ Country Burkina Faso Ghana Kenya Malawi Niger Senegal Tanzania N 11.6 (1.5) Percentage (%) 25.7 40.1 34.2 44.2 55.9 20.7 21.9 19.4 14.5 23.6 29.8 60.6 9.6 45.5 25.5 14.6 14.4 16.4 16.0 12.4 10.4 7.3 17.4 20.2 19,992 Note: Household wealth is not shown; 1Based on weighted percentage As can be seen from Table 1, there was an average of 11.6 years between survey 1 and survey 2. About a quarter of women had no education whereas about 40% had pri- mary education and 34% had secondary or higher educa- tion. Slightly more than half (nearly 56%) were working, and a majority (60.6%) were married. Each of the age groups 15-19, 20-24 and 25-29 comprised almost 20% of the total sample. Most women (45.5%) had less than two children ever born and a quarter had two or three chil- dren. Niger (7.3% of the total sample) and to a lesser extent Malawi (10.4%) had the lowest sample size, whereas Tanzania (20.2%) had the largest sample. Descriptive analysis Table 2 shows that the prevalence of urban obesity mark- edly went up by nearly 42% (from 17.9% to 25.4%) between survey 1 and survey 2. Over the same period, the prevalence of overweight rose by 14.5%, and the preva- lence of overweight/obesity increased by 35.5%. Figure 2 TFrigeundres i2n urban overweight and obesity by household wealth Trends in urban overweight and obesity by house- hold wealth. shows changes over time in overweight and obesity by household wealth. The prevalence of overweight/obesity was highest among the wealthiest in both surveys 1 and 2. It is important to note that while overweight/obesity increased by nearly 35% (from 23.2% in survey 1 to 31.4 in survey 2 (see Table 1), the increase was higher among the poorest (+50% from 13.7% to 20.5%) than among the richest (+7% from 35.4% to 37.9%). Educational dif- ferences in trends of overweight/obesity (see Figure 3) showed an even stronger divide. While the prevalence of overweight/obesity increased by about 45-50% among the non-educated and primary-educated women, it dropped down by close to 10% among women with sec- ondary education or higher. TFrigeundres i3n urban overweight and obesity by education Trends in urban overweight and obesity by educa- tion. Page 4 of 9 (page number not for citation purposes)