Physical activity and sedentary behavior in children from different sosioeconomic backgrounds

What is it about?

Higher levels of physical activity has been associated with better physical, social, and cognitive health while higher levels of certain sedentary behaviors, such as screen time, have been linked to poorer health outcomes. We showed that children from families with lower parental education and annual household income had less supervised physical activity than other children. However, we found no differences in total daily physical activity between children from different backgrounds. Boys from with lower parental education and annual household income also had more screen time than other boys.

Featured Image

Why is it important?

Our findings show that it is not necessary to promote supervised exercise lessons to narrow the health inequalities in children. Promoting environment that support physically active lifestyle may have more pronounced effect on physical activity levels than that of supervised exercise. Unstructured physical activity is also affordable for most families.

Perspectives