Socioeconomic Factors And Accelerometer Physical Activity Measurement In Early Childhood

Family socioeconomic status (SES) and physical activity (PA) are important determinants of health. However, much of the research examining associations between SES and PA has primarily focused on older children, adolescents, and adults, making it unclear how socioeconomic factors are related to PA in very young children PURPOSE: To examine associations between SES and PA in 18- to 30-month old children. METHODS: Cross-sectional data on 33 children (63% Female) from the Building Understanding of Developmental Differences across Years (BUDDY) study, a longitudinal study of families in New York designed to investigate child development from birth to age 3, were included in this study. PA was measured in a 24-h protocol for 2 days with the wrist worn accelerometer (Actigraph GT3X+). Data were analyzed with the GGIR package in R. Family SES, operationalized as family income-to-needs and years of parental education, as well as neighborhood deprivation, as indexed by the state area deprivation index, were collected from mothers. Linear regression models were used to examine associations between PA, family income-to-needs, parental education, and neighborhood deprivation. In these models, children’s assigned sex assigned at birth, age, race, and ethnicity were included as covariates. RESULTS: Higher parental education was associated with more PA in children (r = .37, p < .05), and this association remained significant when controlling for sex, age, race, and ethnicity. In contrast, family income-to-needs (r = .14, p > .05)and neighborhood deprivation (r = -.20, p > .05) were not significantly associated with overall PA in children. CONCLUSIONS: Our findings suggest that higher parental education is associated with more PA in young children, indicating that socioeconomic disparities in PA are detectable in early childhood. Further research in larger samples is warranted to better understand these relationships.