Journal Article

Diminishing benefits of urban living for children and adolescents’ growth and development

Döring, Angela, Assunção, Maria Cecília F., Kulaga, Zbigniew, Leth-Møller, Katja B., Joukar, Farahnaz, Duan, Jia Li, Ferrante, Daniel, Key, Timothy, Moreira, Leila B., Gkiouras, Konstantinos, Wong-McClure, Roy A., He, Yuan, Mursu, Jaakko, Yusof, Safiah Md, Wang, Ming-Dong, Sepanlou, Sadaf G., Al-Hazzaa, Hazzaa M., Damsgaard, Camilla T., Bruno, Graziella, Żegleń, Magdalena, Huerta, José María, Shiri, Rahman, Francis, Damian K., Peters, Annette, Kiechl, Sophia J., Lin, Xu, Herter-Aeberli, Isabelle, Kim, Hyeon Chang, Michels, Nathalie, Sparboe-Nilsen, Bente, Sparrenberger, Karen, Dias-da-Costa, Juvenal Soares, Wannamethee, S. Goya, Eslami, Saeid, Moreno, Emma Ruiz, Barros, Mauro Virgílio Gomes, Ioannidou, Eliza Markidou, Malhotra, Rahul, Markey, Oonagh, Baran, Rafał, Pan, Wen-Harn, Cheng, Yiling J., Eddie, Ricky, Parnell, Winsome R., Tsao, Yu-Hsiang, Barnoya, Joaquin, Frontera, Guillermo, Nankap, Martin, Bonilla-Vargas, Alice, Fernandes, Romulo A., Sjöström, Michael, Islam, Sheikh Mohammed Shariful, El Ammari, Laila, Noto, Davide, Kratenova, Jana, Fumihiko, Matsuda, Gu, Dongfeng, Mistretta, Antonio, Sa

2023

Overview

Optimal growth and development in childhood and adolescence is crucial for lifelong health and well-being 1 – 6 . Here we used data from 2,325 population-based studies, with measurements of height and weight from 71 million participants, to report the height and body-mass index (BMI) of children and adolescents aged 5–19 years on the basis of rural and urban place of residence in 200 countries and territories from 1990 to 2020. In 1990, children and adolescents residing in cities were taller than their rural counterparts in all but a few high-income countries. By 2020, the urban height advantage became smaller in most countries, and in many high-income western countries it reversed into a small urban-based disadvantage. The exception was for boys in most countries in sub-Saharan Africa and in some countries in Oceania, south Asia and the region of central Asia, Middle East and north Africa. In these countries, successive cohorts of boys from rural places either did not gain height or possibly became shorter, and hence fell further behind their urban peers. The difference between the age-standardized mean BMI of children in urban and rural areas was <1.1 kg m –2 in the vast majority of countries. Within this small range, BMI increased slightly more in cities than in rural areas, except in south Asia, sub-Saharan Africa and some countries in central and eastern Europe. Our results show that in much of the world, the growth and developmental advantages of living in cities have diminished in the twenty-first century, whereas in much of sub-Saharan Africa they have amplified. The advantage of living in cities compared with rural areas with respect to height and BMI in children and adolescents has generally become smaller globally from 1990 to 2020, except in sub-Saharan Africa.

• Publisher: Nature Publishing Group UK,Nature Publishing Group
• Subject: 692/308/3187 / 692/700/2814 / 692/700/478 / 706/134 / Adolescence / Adolescent / Adolescents / Africa / Africa South of the Sahara / Africa South of the Sahara - epidemiology / Africa, Northern - epidemiology / Age / Allmänmedicin / Asia / Asia - epidemiology / Body Height / Body Mass Index / Body Weight / Child / Child, Preschool / Children / Children & youth / Cities / Ciências sociais / Clinical Medicine / epidemiology / Female / General Medicine / Girls / Growth and Development / Health Sciences / High income / Humanities and Social Sciences / Humans / Hälsovetenskap / Income / Industrialized nations / Klinisk medicin / Low income groups / Male / Medborgarcentrerad hälsa (Mech) / Medical and Health Sciences / Medicin och hälsovetenskap / Middle East / Middle East - epidemiology / multidisciplinary / Northern / Nutrition / Oceania / Oceania - epidemiology / Pediatrics / Pediatrik / Population studies / Population-based studies / Preschool / Research on Citizen Centered Health, University of Skövde (Reacch US) / Rural areas / Rural Population / Rural Population - statistics & numerical data / Science / Science (multidisciplinary) / Social sciences / statistics & numerical data / Teenagers / Urban areas / Urban Population / Urban Population - statistics & numerical data / Young Adult