The Finnish institute for health and welfare (THL) on Friday said that children and adolescents from families of lower socioeconomic status are more likely to be overweight or obese.
It is more common for children whose parents have low levels of education and income, and who live in rural areas to be overweight or obese, compared to kids from higher-educated, higher-income families living in urban areas, according to THL's new study.
Researchers examined socioeconomic status based on parents' education, household income and place of residence.
The obesity rate was 21 percent among boys aged 7-12 whose mothers had low educational attainment, while it was 14 percent for girls in the same category.
Among boys with highly educated mothers, the corresponding figure was 11 percent, and for girls, it was six percent. A similar difference in the prevalence of obesity among boys and girls of primary school age was also observed based on the father's level of education.
In low-income families, the prevalence of obesity among boys of primary school age was 17 percent and 11 percent for girls, whereas among boys from the highest-income families, the corresponding figures were 9 percent and four percent for girls.
Marketing restrictions and urban planning
The THL said the research results emphasised the need for health policy decisions and societal actions to narrow health disparities within the population.
Societal actions, according to the THL, include measures such as health-based taxation, restrictions on the marketing of unhealthy foods and urban planning that supports physical activity.
"Health policy decisions should consider health disparities between population groups to help make healthy lifestyles accessible to all families irrespective of their socioeconomic background," Päivi Mäki, a development manager at the institute, said in a release.
This study was the first in Finland to examine the associations between parents' socioeconomic status and the prevalence of childhood obesity by combining data from two national registers. These were the Avohilmo database, which gathers information on basic healthcare—like school health records—and figures from Statistics Finland.
In total, the dataset encompassed over 190,000 children and adolescents between the ages of 2 and 17.