Effects of socioeconomic status on the physical activity in adolescents: a systematic review of the evidence

Abstract

The relationship between physical activity and socioeconomic status (SES) is evident in the adult population, but is much discussed with regard to adolescents. The main objective of this review was, therefore, to clarify whether there is a relationship between physical activity and SES in adolescents. Computerized searches were conducted in the databases PubMed, ISI Web of knowledge and SPORT-Discus to identify all relevant articles up to July 2009. Other review articles, descriptive or theoretical articles and articles where the adolescents in the samples were outside the age group of 13-18 years were excluded. Sixty-two articles were included in the end. The main results support the hypothesis that there is an association between SES and physical activity among adolescents, and that adolescents with higher SES are more physically active than those with lower SES. The findings are, however, far from uniform. Forty-two percent of the included studies report no or an opposite relation. There is also an inconsistent use of measures for both variables that complicates explanations and interpretations of the findings. This fortifies the claim that there is no single explanation for a possible difference in physical activity between different socioeconomic groups.

Decline in Physical Activity Among Iranian Girl Students Aged 10 to 16 and the Related Factors

“…Increased educational level of mothers was associated with increased MVPA in their daughters. Jekauc et al found that socioeconomic status can affect the RPA recommendations only in girls, and girls with low socioeconomic status were more likely to obey the RPA recommendation than girls with high socioeconomic status were (41) that is in contrast to prior reviews (42,43). It has been indicated Health Scope.…”

Parental education and perception of outdoor playing time for preschoolers

“…It is also worth mentioning that children's independent mobility is a factor significantly associated with their time spent playing outdoors, considering it depends on several variables including the parent's perception on the neighborhood's safety 27 . Because of inferior supervised time, low levels of outdoor play in HPE children can be due to the mothers' concerns on the neighborhood's safety and on the safety of the living areas 34 . Thus, it seems important to have further study on what children can and cannot do when they are outdoors, and to identify the quality of the opportunities for outdoor play 35 .…”

Empowering aspects for healthy food and physical activity habits: adolescents’ experiences of a school-based intervention in a disadvantaged urban community

“…To obtain more equity in health, it is important to address health-related behaviours (the Swedish Commission for Equity in Health, 2017). Adolescents’ socioeconomic status (SES) and their ethnicity have been identified as contributing factors for unhealthy eating (Mattisson, 2016) and physical activity (Stalsberg & Pedersen, 2010). These health habits have the potential to decrease the risk of illness and can thus contribute to reducing the health gap between adolescents from different SES groups (Mattisson, 2016; World Health Organization, 2016).…”