A study has found that children and teens living in cities did not have an edge over their peers in villages, in middle- and low-income countries.
A global consortium of over 1,500 researchers and physicians analysed the height and weight data of 71 million children and adolescents aged 5 to 19 years across urban and rural areas in 200 countries. The study traced the development of children and adolescents from 1990 until 2020, and found that the advantages of living in cities with regard to healthy growth, had shrunk across the world.
Led by Imperial College, London, the study, analysing the trends in child and adolescent height and body mass index (BMI), has been published in Nature. It is titled, ‘Diminishing benefits of urban living for children and adolescents’ health’ by Majid Ezzati et al.
The researchers found that in 1990, school-aged children and adolescents who grew up in cities with opportunities for better education, nutrition, sports and recreation were a few inches taller and had higher BMI than their rural peers. By 2020, however, the BMI averages rose for most countries except sub-Saharan Africa and south Asia, where the BMI rose faster in rural areas.
Lead author of the study Anu Mishra from Imperial College London’s School of Public Health said the result challenged commonly-held perceptions about the negative aspects of living in cities around nutrition and health. “In fact, cities continue to provide considerable health benefits for children and adolescents. Fortunately, in most regions, rural areas are catching up to cities thanks to modern sanitation and improvements in nutrition and healthcare,” Dr. Mishra said.
Diabetologist V. Mohan, whose Dr. Mohan’s Diabetes Specialities Centre was one of the collaborators from India said, the revelation was startling and had exposed the diminishing health benefits for children and teens in urban areas.
Diabetologist A. Ramachandran, also one of the collaborators of the study, said: “The new study found that in the 21st century the urban height advantage shrank in most countries as a result of accelerating improvements in height for children and adolescents in rural areas.”
In India too there was little difference in height and BMI between rural and urban children.
The assumption that urbanisation resulted in an obesity epidemic also did not hold water, the study found. In many high-income Western countries that there was very little difference in height and BMI over time, and the gap between urban and rural BMI differed less than one unit in 2020.
Prof. Ezzati said, “The issue is about where the poor live, and whether governments are tackling growing inequalities with initiatives like supplementary incomes and free school meal programmes,” adding: “Faltering growth in school-aged children and adolescents is strongly linked to poor health through life, lost educational attainment and the immense cost of unrealised human potential.”
