Socioeconomic inequalities in children’s diet: the role of the home food environment

Table 3 Estimated Healthy Eating Index value by level of parent education, before and after adjusting for neighborhood and home food environment

	Model 1 (estimated mean HEI, 95% CI)	Model 2 (estimated mean HEI, 95% CI)	Model 3 (estimated mean HEI, 95% CI)	Model 4 (estimated mean HEI, 95% CI)
Education
< high school	38.08 (37.3, 38.9)	38.23 (37.4, 39.1)	38.39 (37.6, 39.2)	38.52 (37.7, 39.4)
High school/GED	37.96 (37.3, 38.6)	38 (37.3, 38.7)	38.2 (37.6, 38.9)	38.23 (37.6, 38.9)
Some college	38.08 (37.5, 38.7)	38.07 (37.5, 38.7)	38.09 (37.5, 38.7)	38.09 (37.5, 38.7)
College degree	39.41 (38.8, 40)	39.33 (38.7, 39.9)	39.27 (38.7, 39.9)	39.22 (38.6, 39.8)
Difference in SHEI between lowest and highest educational category	-1.33 (-2.24, -0.42)	-1.1 (-2.04, -0.15)	-0.87 (-1.78, 0.04)	-0.7 (-1.65, 0.24)
p for difference	0.0041	0.0227	0.0606	0.145

NOTES: SPAN Healthy Eating Index (SHEI) is a composite measure combining responses to consumption of healthy foods and unhealthy foods, scaled to 100, and coded so that higher scores represent healthier diets. See Table 1 for a listing of the healthy and unhealthy foods comprising the SHEI. Table 3 presents regression-derived mean values of the SHEI for each of the educational categories, as well as the contrast between the highest and lowest categories of education. Model 1 examines differences in children’s SHEI scores across levels of parental education after adjusting for race/ethnicity and rural/urban location. Model 2 adds neighborhood environment measures to Model 1; Model 3 adds home food environment measures to Model 1. Model 4 is the full model, and adds both neighborhood and home food environment measures to Model 1.

ISSN: 1479-5868