ObesityOver the past three decades, the growing epidemic of obesity has become one of the most colossal problems affecting the world's populations. This epidemic is driven not only by socioeconomic status, but also by everything that correlates with it, such as race, gender, and education level. When it comes to socioeconomic status, income is the major factor, but little research is conducted on the cognitive factors inherent to each socioeconomic group (Ball, Crawford, 2009). Normally, obesity research is limited to data found in the United States and refuses to include statistics from other countries that might not be as developed, such as China (He, James, mu0pu, Zheng, 2014) . Age is also another variable contributing to unhealthy weight gain among the global population. Childhood obesity has become such a significant problem that programs are being implemented around the world to try to prevent it in the first place (Cunningham, Gazmararian, Gonzalez-Casanova, Martorell, Pratt, Sarmiento, & Stein, 2013). Along with childhood obesity, obesity is just as common in adulthood and has increased twice as much since 1980 among Americans (Forjuoh, Lee, Ory, Une, 2013). In the following research paper, I will discuss all the factors that are correlated. with the growth of obesity in the world today. It is hypothesized that socioeconomic status is directly related to increasing rates of obesity. Age is also predicted to be another critical issue related to high risk of being overweight. In HINTS there are many topics and a lot of detail on the subject it covers. The data collected to formulate these hypotheses parallels the data collected in the HINTS surveys in many respects; the only difference is that HI...... middle of document ......socioeconomic-gap-in-childhood-overweight-and-obesity-in-r20103t0H8Forjuoh, SN, Lee , C., Ory, M.G., & Yoon, J. (2012). Neighborhood walking among overweight and obese adults: Age variations in barriers and motivators. J Community Health, 38, 12-22. doi: DOI 10.1007/s10900-012-9592-6Ball, K., Crawford, D., & Timperio, A. (2009). Socio-economic inequalities of neighborhoods in terms of access and accessibility to food. Health and Place, (15), 578-595. Retrieved from www.elsevier.com/locate/healthplaceCasanova, IG, Cunningham, SA, Gazmararian, JA, Martorell, R., Pratt, M., & Stein, AD (2013). Comparison of three body mass index classification systems for assessing overweight and obesity in children and adolescents. Rev Panam Salud Publica, 5(33), retrieved from http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23764666Hints. (nd). Retrieved from http://hints.cancer.gov/about.aspx