Social Determinants of Health and Adverse Childhood Experiences: How Are These Intertwined to Determine Childhood Overweight and Obesity in Argentina?

Yedith B. Guillén-Fernández ()
Additional contact information
Yedith B. Guillén-Fernández: Instituto de Investigaciones Económicas, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Mexico City 04510, Mexico

Social Sciences, 2025, vol. 14, issue 2, 1-26

Abstract: Argentina is one of the countries in the Latin American region with the highest incidence of childhood obesity. The incidence of childhood overweight and obesity among children under five years of age is approximately 15%, according to the 2022 MICS survey. Obesity is a nutritional disorder that is explained not only by biological factors but also by socioeconomic and family circumstances. The objective of this study is to investigate the factors and risks that determine childhood overweight and obesity in Argentine children under five years of age. To explain this, this article presents an integrative model of two theoretical frameworks, social determinants of health (SDH) and adverse childhood experiences (ACEs), called hereafter “IM-SDH-ACEs”, in order to understand how these determinants are related to influence childhood malnutrition. This study performs a Chi-square test to empirically corroborate that SDH and ACEs influence this type of weight disorder; thus, it is shown that socioeconomic status (SES) and age groups together with ACEs are factors associated with childhood overweight and obesity. Likewise, a multinomial logistic regression model is estimated, and the results show that the highest risks of suffering from overweight and obesity in childhood are the predictors of physical violence (PV) inflicted on the child as well as an interaction of the variables of deprivation in health care and a secondary education level of mothers or carers. It is concluded that a more inclusive social policy is required to reduce childhood obesity in Latin American societies.

Keywords: IM-SDH-ACEs: integrative model of social determinants of health and adverse childhood experiences; physical violence (PV); socioeconomic stratum (SES); healthcare deprivation (HC); relative risks ratio (RRR) (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: A B N P Y80 Z00 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2076-0760/14/2/68/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2076-0760/14/2/68/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jscscx:v:14:y:2025:i:2:p:68-:d:1579012

Access Statistics for this article

Social Sciences is currently edited by Ms. Yvonne Chu

More articles in Social Sciences from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().