Obesity during chidhood: an analysis of a cohort of newborns in Rome

Demography, as defined by its etymology (from Greek demos, meaning ‘people, district’, and graphy, meaning ‘writing, describing’), is a science carrying out research on the population and investigating its changes through time. It is a dynamic science in constant transformation, mainly studying birth, death and migration trends and their effects on the population considered. Demography is a multidisciplinary science, since it usually relies on theories from diverse fields such as sociology, statistics and economics to analyse and explain populations-related phenomena. Along demography, epidemiology (from Greek epi, meaning 'upon, among', demos, meaning 'people, district', and logos, meaning 'study, word, discourse') is a discipline dealing with populations’ health status, which focuses on the causes, development and consequences of health diseases among the population itself. The link between demography and epidemiology has always been complex, since both disciplines work on populations-related phenomena and their fields of research often overlap, even if relevant studies are carried out following diverse approaches and different (but parallel) research methods. It is precisely their multidisciplinary nature and the correlated topics they investigate that support through time a process of interconnection between the two. Both demography and epidemiology study the populations’ health conditions, a topic related to a number of other issues such as the causes of death and the onset of diseases. In particular, both disciplines study mothers and children’s health status before, during and after pregnancy, investigating the causes of low birth weight, infant mortality and maternal mortality during pregnancy. In the last decades, an increasing trend of children’s ponderal excess status in Italy and all over the world has opened the floor for new studies and related debates. In fact, it is well known that overweight/obesity since one’s childhood is a determinant of one’s health conditions, influencing their quality of life and their survival at all ages. A number of psychological, physical and social problems can be the consequences of an important ponderal excess, that call upon researchers to look for its causes not only in children’s “daily habits and lifestyles”, but also in parents’ socio-demographic factors and the environment where children grow up. As a matter of fact, this thesis explores the shared interest of demography and epidemiology to offer a better analysis of the main causes of overweight/obesity during infancy.