The Impact of Child Obesity in the UK (2024)

Lingyang Zeng ^{* 1}

¹ North China University of Technology

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Abstract

The issue of child obesity remains a prominent concern globally, recognizing that children are not only the future of individual families but also integral to the future of nations. This report aims to comprehensively examine the problem of child obesity by analysing variations in child obesity rates among the five boroughs of Ealing, Hammersmith & Fulham, Hounslow, Kensington & Chelsea, and Richmond in the UK, using knowledge in probability statistics. To delve into the data, it is hoped to calculate its impact on child obesity across three key dimensions: schools, families, and societies. For the study of child obesity differences in five regions, this report firstly divides these five regions into a group of two by two, after which the two-sample t-test function is invoked through MATLAB to detect the corresponding child obesity data in each two regions. Special emphasis is that the null hypothesis is set as no significant difference between the two samples in the detection process. Finally, according to the calculation results determine whether there is a significant difference between the two samples of child obesity. In the study of the influence of schools, families, and societies on the problem of child obesity, this report first chooses the ‘Corr’ function in MATLAB to determine the correlation between three factors and child obesity rates. After that report used the ‘Fitlm’ function to establish a linear regression model. Finally, by calculating the confidence interval of the regression model, to judge the reliability of the regression model. Through data analysis and modelling, it can be found that there are significant differences in child obesity rates between some regions. Through the correlation judgement, it is found that the factors of schools, families and societies are all positively related to the child obesity rates. Therefore, if the British government wants to better solve the child obesity problem, in addition to exploring the obesity problem between regions and modifying the relevant policies for different regions, it is also necessary to start from several perspectives in schools, families, and societies, to pay more attention to children's education, to give more help to unemployed families, and to increase the amount of children's exercise. Through the joint efforts of these, the problem of child obesity can be further solved more efficiently. In conclusion, data of this report only covers some boroughs in the UK, the results of the study may be somewhat one-sided. It is hoped that the choice of nations and variables selected for the data can be expanded later to further look for more factors affecting child obesity.

Keywords

child obesity, hypothesis testing, linear regression

References

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Data Availability

The datasets used and/or analyzed during the current study will be available from the authors upon reasonable request.

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Volume Title

ISBN (Print)

ISBN (Online)

Published Date

16 May 2024

Series

Journal of Applied Economics and Policy Studies

ISSN (Print)

2977-5701

ISSN (Online)

2977-571X

DOI

10.54254/2977-5701/5/2024027

Copyright

16 May 2024

Open Access

This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited