Child Obesity Rate Increase Among Poor Families

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A new study has found that there are more obese children enrolling into Kindergarten in the U.S. now compared to way back in 1998, with the exception of children from wealthy families.  

Reuters has learned that the new finding seems to contradict a report by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released in 2014. 

Cynthia Ogden, branch chief of the National Center for Health Statistics in Rockville, Maryland, said last year's obesity rate was slower than the statistics obtained from the '80s and the '90s.

"The rapid increase in obesity we saw in the '80s and '90s has definitely slowed. There's some glimmer of hope in the new data in relation to the 2 to 5 year olds," says Ogden. 

A more recent study, which was published in JAMA Pediatrics, found that obesity has actually increased in children entering Kindergarten, which would involve children around 4 to 5 years of age.

For the study, researchers sifted through data of about 17,000 children starting Kindergarten way back in 1998. The data from the 1998 files was compared with the data from over 15,500 children who started Kindergarten in 2010, reports Reuters. 

The data revealed that in 1998, 12 percent of children were obese; whereas, there was a 14 percent obesity rate in 2010. Overall, the data revealed that the obesity rate increased by 20 percent from 1998 to 2010. 

Additionally, researchers found that there was no difference in obesity rates when boys were compared to girls. However, a significant difference in obesity rates was seen when researchers grouped the children into five socioeconomic levels.

The results showed that there was a lower obesity rate for children from wealthy families, Fox News has learned.

"When you start splitting children up by different socioeconomic groups, then you find the increase is rather quite large among the lower socioeconomic group," said Ashlesha Datar, one of the researchers in the study.  

The team of researchers also discovered that from 1998 to 2010, the disparity in obesity rates between the poorest and wealthiest children increased by 11 percent.

Asheley Cockrell Skinner, an expert on childhood obesity, believes that the findings of the study are "important and critical information."

"The fact that the prevalence of obesity continues to increase for the poorest children and that that's not true for wealthier children is a problem," quips Skinner 

Skinner adds that the environments and cultures of poor people differ greatly from wealthier people and that policymakers should be aware of this.