Where the men are heavier than the women

The National Center for Health Statistics keeps a standing set of figures for
the health of the white non-Hispanic population in the United States. Two of
them are interesting only in comparison with the other groups.

The reversal

Men higher than women, on both. In the Black or African American
non-Hispanic figures the gap runs the other way and is far wider — 38.7% of
men against 55.9% of women for obesity.

So the sex difference in obesity is not a fact about men and women. It is a
fact about a particular population, and it changes sign between groups — which
is exactly the kind of thing a national average erases.

Obesity figures are 2015–2018; hypertension is 2017 to March 2020.

Births and deaths

Heart disease leads the causes of death, which both rows of the first table
feed into.

Health status and coverage

• 13.4% of adults are in fair or poor health (2024)
• 1.8% of children under 18 are in fair or poor health (2024)
• 11.1% of adults currently smoke cigarettes (2024)
• 7.8% of adults aged 18–64 had no health insurance at interview (2024)
• 4.1% of children under 18 had no health insurance (2024)

One small inversion worth noticing inside this group too: **adults are less
likely to be uninsured than children are** — 7.8% against 4.1% is the other
way round, but among Black or African American Americans the adult figure is
10.5% against 2.7% for children. Children's coverage programmes reach further
than adult ones almost everywhere, and by different margins in different
groups.

Comparable pages exist for the American Indian or Alaska Native, Asian, Black
or African American, Hispanic or Latino, Mexican American, and Native Hawaiian
or Other Pacific Islander populations.

*Source: National Center for Health Statistics, Centers for Disease Control
and Prevention.*