A new study found that America’s youth are among the least fit in the world—and our unequal income distribution likely has something to do with it.
“We know that when there’s a large gap between rich and poor in a country, there tend to be large subpopulations of poor people within that country,” says Justin Lang, the first author on the new paper and a PhD student studying population health at the University of Ottawa. “Poverty, we know, is linked with a whole bunch of poor health outcomes. One of those outcomes is poor aerobic fitness in children.” The link between obesity and cardiorespiratory fitness lies at the heart of this discussion, and while it’s perhaps unsurprising that being overweight has a negative impact on fitness, the real question at the center of the matter might be, “What does income inequality have to do with obesity?”
Read more at How Income Inequality Is Slowing America Down | Outside Online
