Family support, socioeconomic status and eating behavior
Summary
A quantitative study was conducted among students between the age of 11 and 16 (N=8042) in the Netherlands. The aim of this study was to investigate whether students show unhealthier eating behavior if they come from a family of a low socioeconomic status (SES). The second aim of this study was to investigate if perceiving social support from home positively influences the eating behavior of students, and whether family support and SES socioeconomic status interacts on eating behavior.
The students participated in a questionnaire from HBSC in 2018 with questions about health, wellbeing and the social context of the students.
The results of this questionnaire suggest that there is a reliable correlation between unhealthy eating behaviors and living in low SES conditions. The results also provide insight in the relationship between the perception of social support from home and eating behavior. Students who perceive more family support, show healthier eating behavior. However, there is no significant relationship between the interaction of perceiving social support and level of SES on eating behavior of the student.
Families of a high SES can provide healthier food for their children because they have more resources. Conversely, families of a low SES have to deal with more challenges and therefore need to make choices that are financially oriented. Students who perceive more family support show healthier eating behavior, because they are more likely to copy the behavior of their parents. Hereby it is also interesting for further research to include the eating behavior of parents to compare their dietary habits with their child’s habits.