When richer doesn't mean thinner: Ethnicity, socioeconomic position, and the risk of child obesity in the United Kingdom.

Abstract

A range of studies report a robust association between family socioeconomic position and the prevalence of child overweight/obesity. On average, children from poorer backgrounds are more likely to be overweight/obese than children from more advantaged families. However, a small number of US studies have shown that, for ethnic minority children, the association is either nonexistent or reversed. We test if the link between socioeconomic position and child overweight/obesity at age 7 is heterogeneous in the United Kingdom where rates of obesity are particularly high for some groups of ethnic minority children. We use nationally representative data from the UK Millennium Cohort Study as well as descriptive analyses and logistic regression models. Poorer White children are at higher risk of overweight/obesity than higher income White children. However, socioeconomic disparities are reversed for Black African/Caribbean children and nonexistent for children of Indian and Pakistani/Bangladeshi origin. Moreover, the health behaviours that explain socioeconomic disparities in child overweight/obesity for the White group appear to be irrelevant in explaining differences by socioeconomic position for the Black Caribbean and African groups. We should be careful in assuming that higher socioeconomic position is protective against child overweight/obesity for all groups of the population. This study shows for the first time important variation by ethnicity in the link between socioeconomic position and child overweight/obesity - and in the underlying mechanisms linking them - in the United Kingdom.