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From EurekAlert! - Breaking News:
Maybe when we were their age, we walked five miles to school, rain or shine.
According to a University of Michigan researcher, concerns about safety are the main reason that less than 13 percent of U.S. children walked or biked to school in 2004, compared to more than 50 percent who did so in 1969.
"These concerns are strongly linked to the kind of physical environment children navigate between home and school," said Byoung-Suk Kweon, an environmental and landscape architecture researcher at the U-M Institute for Social Research (ISR).
"The greener the route, the more likely it is that children will walk and bike."
Using Geographic Information System (GIS) data combined with a survey of 186 parents of 5th through 8th grade students, Kweon found that parents were most concerned about the speed and volume of traffic students would encounter en route to school; the possibility of crime; and the weather.
"Parents may be concerned about the safety of bike lanes, and they may be telling their children to ride on the sidewalk because it's safer," she said.
By identifying environmental elements conducive to walking and biking to school, Kweon hopes her research may help improve children's physical health and reduce the incidence of childhood obesity, especially prevalent among minority children.
ISR conducts some of the most widely-cited studies in the nation, including the Reuters/University of Michigan Surveys of Consumers, the American National Election Studies, the Monitoring the Future Study, the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, the Health and Retirement Study, and the National Survey of Black Americans.
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Posted on March 26, 2008 10:20 PM
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