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According to new findings, high crime rates may encourage young girls to acquire weight.
This week, a research financed by the National Institutes of Health and published discovered a strong association between crime in New York City and childhood obesity, particularly among girls.
The study, which was published in the journal Health & Place, used a decade’s worth of regional NYPD crime statistics and data from NYC Fitnessgram, an annual fitness survey of kids, to conclude that high crime levels can increase the waistlines of adolescent girls.
The body mass index of females who were exposed to more than 20 crimes on their block was 7.5% higher than usual.
Girls aged 14 to 18 in these high-crime neighborhoods had a 5.5% greater likelihood of being overweight.
The study, which was published in the journal Health & Place, considered a decade of geographical NYPD crime statistics and NYC Fitnessgram data.
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Researchers discovered that violent crime has a negligible effect on obesity rates and high BMIs among boys, who displayed no improvement in physical fitness as a result of neighborhood violence. Scientists hypothesized that men and women may respond differently to trauma.
The authors noted, “To the extent that parents treat boys and girls differently, or that teenage boys and girls react differently to stressful situations such as neighborhood violence, we may see gender differences.”
According to the study, the type of crimes that occur in a community also has an impact on how it affects children’s health.
Girls who were exposed to more than twenty crimes on their block would have a 7.5% higher body mass index than average.
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For instance, property crime had little effect on the weight of children in the area, indicating that violence is the most important health concern for females.
In the peer-reviewed study, Agustina Laurito, an assistant professor in the Department of Public Administration at the University of Illinois Chicago and the study’s lead author, wrote, “Our results suggest our findings are not driven by general neighborhood disorder but by the more disruptive effects of neighborhood violence.”