Obesity Linked to Poverty: Poorer Children Are More Likely to be Obese, Study Says

A new research claims that poorer children are highly likely to become obese than their well-off peers.

According to the UK cohort study published at The European Journal of Public Health, poorer children at the age of 5 are twice likely to be obese and this probability increases as the poor children reach the age of 11 on which they are nearly three times likely to be obese than their peers from better backgrounds.

The researchers obtained this conclusion through the data from the UK Millennium Cohort Study (MCS) which involves data of children born from 19, 244 families. Thus, the weight and height information of the children involved during the age of five and 11 were used for further analysis.

Furthermore, the researchers also looked into factors such as family income and the mother's "health-related behaviors" during and after pregnancy such as smoking habits and length of breastfeeding, and if the child was given solid foods before four months old. The mother's BMI was also assessed.

Besides these, the researchers also measured the impact of physical and "sedentary" behaviors including frequency of sport or exercise, playing time with parents, biking, as well as number of hours watching on TV and playing on PC. The daily bedtime of the child and if there was a playground near the area were also considered.

The researchers also compared dietary habits such as whether the child skipped breakfast, ate fruits and drank sweet beverages.

The children's behaviors during the aforementioned ages were obtained through the interview with their mothers.

Thus, after analyzing all information, the researchers found that there's a strong relationship between obesity and poverty. At the age of five, 6.6 percent of the children from the poor families were obese while 3.5 percent were obese from the children of wealthy backgrounds.

Meanwhile, at the age of 11, the figures increased with 7.9 percent of children from poor families being obese while there are only 2.9 percent obese children from those with better socioeconomic backgrounds.

Moreover, as emphasized by Science Daily, the researchers also found that doing physical activities such as sports three times a week, going to bed early and eating fruits were positively associated with the "downward movement" in the weight categories.

Smoking while pregnant and the mother's BMI, however, were negatively linked to the downward movement. Thus, the researchers concluded that "unhealthy lifestyle" increases the risk of childhood obesity by 20 percent.

"The 'structural' causes of socioeconomic inequalities have to be addressed along with tackling 'inherited' obesity via lifestyle factors that tend to go with lower incomes. Early intervention with parents clearly has huge potential. And evidence from our work suggests that this should start before birth or even conception," lead researcher Prof. Yvonne Kelly of the University College London in the UK said.