Sociodemographic, socioeconomic, clinical and behavioural predictors of body mass index vary by sex in rural South African adults-findings from the AWI-Gen study.

Female sex strongly predicts higher BMI in this rural African population. While some predictors of higher BMI differ by sex, married individuals in both sexes had a higher BMI, suggesting that, in addition to developing sex-specific interventions to combat overweight and obesity, targeting married couples may result in reduction in population BMI.