Disparities in health between rich and poor adolescents grew globally during the first decade of this century, according to a survey conducted in 34 countries in Europe and North America.
The study, published in the Lancet, reports that “socioeconomic differences across multiple areas of adolescent mental and physical health increased between 2002 and 2010.”
According to the research, adolescents from the most impoverished socioeconomic groups are more likely to suffer from poor health thanks to diminished physical activity and larger body mass indices.
“A strong international focus on reducing child poverty and mortality in children under five years has not been matched by a similar response in older age groups, resulting in widening socioeconomic inequalities in adolescent health,” says Frank Elgar, a psychiatry professor at McGill University in Montreal.
Researchers behind the study relied on data compiled from 500,000 young people from across Europe and North America who participated in a World Health Organization survey.
- How to Help Victims of the Texas School Shooting
- TIME's 100 Most Influential People of 2022
- What the Buffalo Tragedy Has to Do With the Effort to Overturn Roe
- Column: The U.S. Failed Miserably on COVID-19. Canada Shows It Didn't Have to Be That Way
- N.Y. Will Soon Require Businesses to Post Salaries in Job Listings. Here's What Happened When Colorado Did It
- The 46 Most Anticipated Movies of Summer 2022
- ‘We Are in a Moment of Reckoning.’ Amanda Nguyen on Taking the Fight for Sexual Violence Survivors to the U.N.