한국 청소년의 비만과 부모의 사회경제적 수준과의 관련성

Abstract

This study aims to identify whether socioeconomic level of parents affects obesity of adolescents and whether the relations between adolescent's obesity and socioeconomic level of parents is similar to those of advanced countries or developing countries. For the study, we interviewed a total of 69,214 secondary and high school students using a short-answer type questionnaire on line at their computer rooms where Internet is available in September 2006. For a definition of obesity, we used height and weight of the subjects to calculate body mass index (kg/m2) and defined the subjects whose body mass index was more than 85 percentile as obesity with a use of the 2007 Infant and Adolescent Growth Chart. For the socioeconomic level of parents, we considered financial status perceived by the subjects and parents' educational background. As a result, we found that 14.2% of the boy students and 12.1% of the girl students had obesity, a means of 13.2%. For the financial status perceived by the subjects, the cross ratio of obesity in middle class was 0.90(95% confidence interval, 0.84-0.97) based on boy students in upper class. As financial status was lower, obesity was significantly less but, there was no significant difference according to parents' educational background. For the girl students based on upper class in financial status, the cross ratio of obesity in lower class was 1.26 (95% confidence interval, 1.14-1.38), which indicates that the lower financial status, the higher cross ratio. In respect to fathers' educational background based on college graduation, the cross ratio was 1.21(95% confidence interval, 1.11-1.33) when fathers were high school graduates, 1.30(95% confidence interval, 1.13-1.50) when fathers were secondary school graduates, and 1.26(95% confidence interval, 1.08-1.47) when the subjects had no idea of educational background. As fathers' educational background was lower, the cross ratio of obesity was significantly higher. In conclusion, the socioeconomic level had significant relations with obesity of adolescents. The boy subjects had more obesity when their family had higher social and economic level as seen in developing countries while the girl subjects had less obesity when their family had higher socioeconomic level, which was a tendency of advanced countries. Therefore, this study suggests that future projects to prevent obesity of adolescents should consider socioeconomic level.