Introduction
Physical activity is an essential aspect in enhancing healthy growth and development of people irrespective of their age. In the United States of America, there has been a significant level of physical inactivity among different groups of the community especially among the youths. This has led to increased prevalence of lifestyle diseases such as obesity paving way for its related diseases. America has recorded the highest rates of obesity in the world. According to Blackburn and Walker (2005), 74.6% of Americans are obese with obesity being one of the leading causes of death in the nation (p.207). Obesity is one of the diseases that have led to the current crisis in the American healthcare system. The medical expenditures associated with obesity in the nation are approximately $70 billion, which translates to more than a quarter of the American healthcare system’s expenditure. Wolf and Colditz argue that America has suffered a loss of 40 million productive workdays and an additional 63 million days due to the frequent visits that obese individuals make to the doctor(s) (1998, p.100). Physical inactivity has proven to be very costly to the American society. This paper explores physical activity among Low-income youth in the US.
The Significance of Physical Activity
Physical activity comprises of both organized as well as informal activities that engage one’s skeletal muscles into any form of movement resulting in caloric expenditure. According to the National Longitudinal Study of Youth, more than 80% of American youth do not do enough physical activity. A large proportion of these youth are those that come from low-income families or rather humble backgrounds. Adequate physical activity, as aforementioned, is essential in reducing the risk of obesity and its related disorders. One of the obesity related problems is Type 2 diabetes, which has tripled within the last five years. Others include incipient heart disease, gall bladder disorders, sleep apnea, orthopedic problems as well as skin disorders. Additionally, physical activity improves bone health, cardio-respiratory as well as muscular fitness. It also leads to a reduction of body fat. Research has shown that physical activity is essential in enhancing ones physical image in a society leading to a reduction of the stress and trauma that overweight and obese individuals undergo. It also lowers the risk of stroke, high blood pressure, falls, depression, and breast as well as colon cancer. However, a large proportion of the youth do not participate actively in the recommended levels of physical activity. Study has shown that 37% of the youth utilize less than twenty minutes of vigorous physical activity in a week. Most of them engage in sedentary activities such as watching television and playing computer/video games. According to the United States Department of Health and Human Services, more than a third of American children and youths spent over three hours watching television programs (2000, p. 12). Generally, most of the youth from economically disadvantaged families do not engage in physical activity.
Low income youth participation in Physical activity
The physical inactivity of low-income youth in the US has portrayed an increasing trend in the recent past. Research has shown that there has been a dramatic decline in the moderate to vigorous activity of youths over the last two decades. Most of the low-income youth rely entirely on the physical activity lessons they get from their schools. In the US, elementary schools offer extracurricular activities for 2.5 days per week while the middle schools offer physical activities for 3.2 days per week (Haplern, 2000, p.191). This is not sufficient to meet the standard physical activity level for the youth. For the students or rather youth from economically advantaged families, they are able to pay for and attend afterschool physical activity programs. This is not the case for their counterparts from the economically disadvantaged backgrounds. Besides being unable to pay for the activity fees, most of the low-income youth do not have the time to attend such activities (Johnson, 200, p. 60). They either have jobs to attend to after school to boost their economic status. Additionally, most of their parents give them some responsibilities that they have to attend to after school such as baby-sitting due to the parent’s inability to hire house-helps.
Most of the low-income youth do not have access to recreational facilities. According to Middlebrook, the major reason behind this is their inability to meet the costs associated with the private recreational facilities (1998, p. 43). On the other hand, the US lacks enough public recreational facilities such as parks, local gyms, or even community centers where the youth can meet to participate in different forms of physical activity. Owing to their limited earnings, the youth may not afford the cost of transportation to the major recreational parks (Parke & O’Neil, 1999, p. 60). In cases whereby the youth are able to meet the transportation costs, they may not be able to meet the cost of accessing a variety of the recreational facilities limiting their participation in physical activity.
Some low-income neighborhoods may have some recreational facilities. In most cases, such facilities are of low quality limiting the youth’s physical activity. Additionally, they have limited equipment and space restricting the number of youths utilizing them at any given moment to a small number. Youths argue that the available recreational facilities are not only dangerous but also dirty thus, they prefer the sedentary activities to spending time in the filthy parks (Romero, 2005, p. 252). Some youth have reported increased lack of security in such facilities, which limit their participation in the required levels of physical activity. In such neighborhoods, parents are never willing to pay for their children’s recreational facilities elsewhere due to the economic constraints that they undergo. In addition, parents who engage in physically exhausting jobs for minimum wages may never view being physically active as a positive, discrete or a significant value to promote in their children. This is contrary to the economically stable parents who value their children’s physical activity.
The American government has also played a pivotal role in limiting the access of recreational facilities to the low-income youth. According to Melicia, Taylor and Floyd the government lacks a proper public policy to address normative as well as youth development concerns other than those that govern formal education (2009, p. 310). It lacks a concrete deliberate public vision that supports and protects the recreational activities to the youth. It also lacks a policy that protects the youth and children from the deleterious effect of the severely polluted indoor as well as outdoor environments within the low-income neighborhoods. Moreover, the planning and legislation of the urban centers have proven to be unfriendly to youth’s play. Several observers have noted that over the past few decades, the American design of urban places is inhospitable to youth’s play. There has been an increase in the restriction of street play with the city councils banning such play and the local police forces occasionally confiscating most of the equipment for street play. Another example of the government’s lack of attention to the physical needs of the youth is the abolition of sidewalks in some new housing developments in the cities.
The government has played a pivotal role in the decline of the number of safe public recreational facilities or rather centers. The government has initiated a decline in the municipal recreation budgets (United States Department of Health and Human Services. 2008, p. 32). Consequently, many of the cities have lost more than half of their parks as well as their recreation staff. Additionally, the chronic disinvestment in urban recreational facilities such as parks and gyms has played a pivotal role in the decline in the condition of such facilities contributing to not only safety concerns but also to further disinvestment. The growing demand of athletic fields has claimed most of the available parks limiting their availability to low income youth and children for informal games and sports.
Intervention Strategies
In order to curb increasing inactivity among the low-income youth, several bodies have come together to enhance the availability of the facilities to the youth. The department of transportation has provided funds to aid in the creation of bike paths, increment as well as improvement of park spaces among other recreational amenities. The canter of Disease Control has come up with the Active Community Environments Initiative that seeks to promote walking as well as provide recreational facilities that are accessible and cheap to ensure that the economically disadvantaged among the youth participate in physical activity (Bryant, 2003, p.112). Other parties that have responded to the problem include the Public Health and Exercise Science communities. They have employed behavioral modification approaches such as designing a school-based intervention program. The program not only helps elementary youth to self-monitor but also to become more selective about the sedentary activities that engage in (Lowry, 2001, p. 150). The National coalition for Promoting Physical activity has also come up with an initiative to help the low-income youth as far as physical activity is concerned-the Physical Activity for Youth Policy Initiative (Geissler, 2001, p. 328). Moreover, the American Alliance for Healthy Physical Education, Recreation and Dance and the New York State Physical Activity coalition have been instrumental in boosting physical activity among low-income youth (Anderson, 2001, p.230). According to the Youth Sports Leadership Project report, youth sports have been a major concern for most of these bodies in enhancing the physical as well of psychological fitness of low-income youth (2002, p. 52).
Conclusion
Physical activity is an essential aspect in enhancing healthy growth and development of an individual. However, not all the members of the society have been able to meet the standard levels of physical activity. The low-income youth in most cases have not been able to access most of the facilities that they require to remain physically fit due to several factors. There are few public recreational amenities which not only have limited facilities but also are also unsafe and of poor quality. Due to the economic constraints that they face, the low-income youth are unable to pay for the fees for high quality physical activity programs elsewhere. Other reasons that have caused the physical inactivity among low-income youth are lack of free time as well as insecurity associated with the available recreational facilities. However, several bodies have joined their efforts to curd the problem physical inactivity among the low-income youth. This will enable most youths from the economically disadvantaged families to access adequate and affordable recreational facilities.
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