Socioeconomic inequalities in non-communicable disease risk factors in Botswana: a cross-sectional study

BACKGROUND: The debate on socioeconomic inequalities in health dominates the research and policy agenda of many countries. The prevalence of non-communicable diseases (NCDs) is on the rise in recent years in Botswana. As a prevention and policy effort, the study provided an empirical evidence on socioeconomic inequalities in NCD risk factors in Botswana. METHODS: Data used in this study was derived from a cross sectional survey on chronic non communicable diseases in Botswana conducted in 2016. The survey adopted a multistage sampling design and a sample of 1178 participants (males and females) aged 15 years and above was selected in both urban and rural areas of Botswana. The inequality analysis was conducted employing decomposition analysis using ADePT software version 6. Logistic regression models were used to show the association between NCD risk factors and socioeconomic status using SPSS version 25. RESULTS: Concentration indices showed that poor physical activity (CI = 0.0546), alcohol consumption (CI = 0.1859) and overweight/obesity (CI = 0.038) were more concentrated among the non-poor while daily smoking (CI = − 0.0308) and poor fruit/vegetable consumption (CI = − 0.1909) were more concentrated among the poor. Wealth status was observed to be the leading contributor to socioeconomic inequality for daily smoking, poor fruit/vegetable consumption, overweight/obesity and poor physical activity. Education was the leading contributor to socioeconomic inequality for alcohol consumption. CONCLUSIONS: Findings in this study indicate the need for concerted differential efforts to address the needs of the poor and non-poor in order to reduce NCD risk factor inequalities. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (10.1186/s12889-019-7405-x) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.