Chicago: A new study has found that the affluence of your neighborhood is linked to your risk of obesity and diabetes. People living in a high-poverty area were more likely to be obese and more likely to have diabetes than those in a low-poverty census tract.
The researchers characterize the association as “modest but potentially important.”
“The effects we see in the study are comparable to what you see from targeted lifestyle interventions or with providing people with medications to prevent the onset of diabetes,” chief author Jens Ludwig of the University of Chicago told Reuters Health in a telephone interview.
He said it shows that “the environment has important impacts on health.”
The conclusion comes from about 4,500 mothers living in public housing where at least 40 percent of the residents in the neighborhood had incomes below the federal poverty level.
