Investigation: Rates of Obesity and Poverty
Is there a causal link between poverty and obesity?
Considering a positively correlated relationship between obesity and poverty initially appears confusing: if an individual is impoverished, living in destitute conditions, or struggling to pay their bills, how would they have enough money to afford to food to become obese in the first place?
There are several contributors and explanations for this seemingly contradictory relationship between poverty and obesity, as well as evidence for a correlated trend between these two descriptors, especially in women and children. As part of these explanations, the habits and nutritional limits imposed by poverty during one’s adolescence appears to be a major contributing factor.
One’s socioeconomic status, gender, and race are all reliable indicators for predicting the likelihood or chance that one may become obese relative to the rest of the population. This report seeks to explicate and document the reasons behind why poverty greatly impacts the incidence of obesity in women and children: especially during childhood and adolescence.
Further, our investigation shows that a variety of social factors such as household instability in combination with nutritional and developmental factors are responsible for the emergent effect of increased obesity in more…
