Neighborhood Context, Poverty, and Urban Children’s Outdoor Play

Although research consistently demonstrates a link between neighborhood conditions and physical activity for adults and adolescents, less is known about residential context and young children’s physical activity. Using data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study (N=2,210), we explore whether outdoor play and television watching are associated with children’s body mass indexes (BMIs) at age five; and whether subjective and objective neighborhood measures are associated with children’s outdoor play and television watching. Hours of outdoor play and television viewing are associated with BMI. Higher maternal perceptions of neighborhood collective efficacy are associated with more hours of outdoor play, fewer hours of television viewing, and more trips to a park or playground. In addition, we find that neighborhood physical disorder is associated with more outdoor play and more television watching. Finally, we find that children living in public housing have one-third more outdoor play time than other children.