Less well-off children more likely to be obese
The study authors warn that the finding is significant since inequalities in overweight among children will contribute to inequalities in adult health and death in the coming decades.
The Growing Up in Ireland study found children, particularly girls, living in unskilled manual working class households, are more likely to be overweight, compared with children from professional households. In gender terms, boys and girls from professional households have about the same probability of being overweight or obese — boys 19% and girls 18%.
However, children from unskilled manual working class households were significantly more likely to be overweight and obese — boys 29% and girls 38%.
Economic scientist and co-author Prof Richard Layte said back in 1948 there was concern about children being under-nourished. He pointed out that there had been a substantial increase in the average height and weight of Irish children in the last half century. The height of the average nine-year-old increased by 9cm, or 7%, between 1948 and 2007.
Over the same period, however, the increase in average weight was 26% among boys and 31% among girls.
He said the two factors taken together pointed to an increase in overweight and obesity among children.
He warned that 80% of children who are obese at nine years of age were going to be obese as adults.
And, he said, if children from working-class households were more likely to be overweight, then inequalities in society were being reproduced.
The report also found that half of parents of overweight children and 20% of parents of obese children believe that they are about the right weight for their height.
Mothers are less likely to see that their child is overweight, if they themselves are overweight or obese.
And children themselves are worse judges of their weight status than their parents.
Of those measured as overweight, only 15% saw themselves to be overweight. And for those measured as obese, those perceiving themselves as overweight rises to 35%.
