Association between obesity in 4- to 7-year-old children and eight types of crime: a hierarchical linear modelling approach

Objective Evidence of the association between childhood obesity and neighbourhood crime is inconclusive. Most previous studies have included children of all ages, and few have examined different types of crime. The objective of this study was to investigate the association between obesity and eight different types of crime (i.e. commercial robbery, street robbery, assault, other violence, commercial break and enter, residential break and enter, theft of vehicle and theft from vehicle) among 4- to 7-year-old children in a large western Canadian city. Methods Cross-sectional, epidemiological study (N = 10,069) using spatial analysis and hierarchical generalized linear modelling. The outcome variable was normal weight or obesity. The exposure variable was the distance between the child's residential postal code and the closest occurrence of each type of crime. Results Controlling for distance to the closest park, frequency of each type of crime in the child's neighbourhood and neighbourhood factors (proportion of visible minorities, education and median family income), there was no association between any of the crime types and childhood obesity. Conclusions Crime did not contribute to obesity in this sample of 4- to 7-year-old children. Replication of this study in other jurisdictions would increase confidence in these results.