Poverty found to be the strongest predictor of childhood obesity across time

In an article from the September issue of Scientific Reports, authors Wang et al. used restricted data from the NICHD Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development (SECCYD) Series to examine the connection between poverty and obesity. Available from the Data Sharing for Demographic Research (DSDR) project, the NICHD SECCYD was a multi-site, prospective, longitudinal study of mother-child pairs. It was designed to examine the relationships between child development and child care during infancy, early childhood, middle childhood, and middle adolescence. It followed a cohort of children at four continuous phases, from birth through age 15, starting in 1991 and ending in 2007. Wang et al. were able to examine the associations of key family and individual factors with the odds of obesity from age two through age 15, using a sample of SECCYD children whose weight was measured at least once during 10 time points during those years. The authors assessed the associations of family dynamics (like poverty and family structure), child characteristics (for example, child temperament), and child-rearing features (including maternal depression, maternal sensitivity, and type of child care) with the development of childhood obesity. Among all of the key factors they studied, poverty status was the strongest predictor of obesity in children, across time. Hence, the authors emphasized the importance of public health interventions that reduce poverty in order to reduce obesity. There are over 1,000 other citations to publications using SECCYD data linked in the ICPSR Bibliography and available on the SECCYD series home page.