Tuesday, February 9, 2010 Previous editions
Saturday, July 11, 2009
OBESITY levels, educational excellence and the physical development of children are directly related to their parents’ educational background and wealth, a groundbreaking study of Irish children’s lives has found.
The first results from a Government-funded seven-year national longitudinal study of 8,500 nine-year-olds — Growing Up in Ireland — has found that the socio-economic background of parents was strongly related to a child’s fruit and vegetable consumption, reading and maths’ scores and overall height and weight.
The study, which will cost €26 million to complete, found that 23% of nine-year-olds from semi-skilled or unskilled backgrounds were classified as overweight, compared to 18% of children from professional/managerial backgrounds.
For obesity, the prevalence was 8% and 5% in the same categories.
The report goes on to reveal that the height of nine-year-olds increased as their family’s social class increased and revealed how a girl’s weight fell in direct relation to increases in parental financial wealth.
The study found that overall almost one in five children are overweight with 7% classed as obese. The study also found a child’s consumption of energy-dense snack foods also increased as parental education fell.
While the report found most children ate well, it suggested most ate too many high-fat snack foods.
More than half of nine-year-olds surveyed had eaten crisps over a 24-hour period, 74% had eaten biscuits, cakes or chocolates.
Respiratory illnesses accounted for almost half of all illnesses while boys were almost twice as likely as girls to be affected by a mental and behavioural condition — 21% compared to 11%.
While boys and girls were equally likely to brush their teeth every day, 9% of children from the lowest income band did not brush regularly compared with only 3% at the top income band.
Children’s Minister Barry Andrews said he was concerned about the obesity levels identified in the report as it was the first time the Government had independent measures of body mass index for a nationally representative sample of nine-year-olds.
Director general of the office of the Minister for Children, Sylda Langford, defended the spending of €26m on the study describing it as the biggest research project on the lives of Irish children: "A quarter of the cost is value added tax so it works out at around €3.5m per year. But it is like in every sphere of life — Toyota would not build a car without researching it first."
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