The data presented here are the results for individual EU Member States from this third wave of the survey. The third wave of the EHIS was conducted in all EU Member States during 2018–2020 according to the European Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) No. This source is documented in more detail in this background article which provides information on the scope of the data, its legal basis, the methodology employed, as well as related concepts and definitions. It aims to provide harmonised statistics across the EU Member States in relation to the respondents’ health status, lifestyle (health determinants) and their use of healthcare services. The European health interview survey (EHIS) is the source of information for this article. In 2019, across all EU Member States, the proportion of pre-obese men was consistently higher than the one for women, with differences ranging from 8.1 pp in Finland to 17.5 pp in Greece (see Figure 3). There was a much clearer picture as regards the differences between the sexes in relation to the share of the male and female populations that were considered to be pre-obese. In Germany, Greece and Sweden the share of obese women and men was almost the same (below 0.2 pp) (see Figures 1 and 2).Ī higher proportion of men (than women) were pre-obese in each EU Member State By contrast, a higher proportion of women were obese in 10 Member States with Latvia (6.1 pp), Estonia (3.9 pp) and Lithuania (3.5 pp) presenting the largest differences. In 17 EU Member States for which data are available, a higher proportion of men (compared with women) were obese, with Malta (3.9 percentage points - pp), Czechia and Luxembourg (3.8 pp) presenting the highest differences.
There was no systematic difference between the sexes as regards the share of obese women and men in 2019. The highest proportions of women considered to be obese were recorded in Estonia (23.6 %) Latvia (25.7 %), Ireland (26.0 %) and Malta (26.7 %), while for obese men the highest shares were found in Croatia (23.7 %), Ireland (25.7 %), Hungary (25.8 %) and Malta (30.6 %) (see Figures 1 and 2). On the other hand, obese men registered the lowest shares in Romania (11.1 %), Italy (12.9 %), the Netherlands (13.2 %) and France (14.3 %). In 2019, for the population aged 18 years and over, the lowest proportions of women considered to be obese were observed in Italy (10.7 %), Romania (10.8 %), Bulgaria (11.9 %) and Cyprus (14.1 %).
In 2019, the highest proportion of obese men and women was recorded in Malta. In the EU the proportion of adults (aged 18 years and over) who were considered to be overweight varied in 2019 between 37.1 % in Italy and 58.5 % in Croatia for women and between 52.9 % in France and 73.2 % in Croatia for men (see Table 1). Figure 2: Proportion of overweight and obese men, 2019