Growing Up in an Inner City Slum a Great Way to Abide in Shape .

Credit: Daniel Garcia, AFP

Stereotypes would make you believe rural kids are tough. They do all those farm chores, right?

Maybe, but they too get to get in the car (or truck, as tenacious as we're still dealing in stereotypes) to go anywhere. City kids get to pass everywhere - especially if they're too short to afford bus fare.

So, there you own it.

City kids are more physically fit than rural kids.

That's the centre of a study coming out of the University of Montreal Hospital Research Center and Department of Social and Preventive Medicine. Researchers found desperately poor kids who live with one parents in inner city slums get much of very good exercise.

Lucky so-and-sos.

Actually, lead researcher Roman Pabayo tells Medical News Today that his data does not fight with a previous statement by Bobbie Smith of the Spinners, who concluded in 1973 that "life ain't so soft when you're a ghetto child."

Pabayo stresses he is just talk about relative advantages of walking or biking to school instead of departure in a car or by bus.

"The subject is crucial for the well-being of children because most children are not meeting physical activity guidelines needed for optimum growth and development," he tells the website.

The work followed the same groups of children as they progressed through school. One of the startling discoveries (unless you chance to be a parent) is that kids may pass or drive their bikes in elementary school, but they choose to get a lift once they hit junior high.

The results of the subject are published in the journal Pediatrics.

"Active transportation to school represents an affordable and comfortable way to incorporate physical action in the daily routines of children," Pabayo tells Medical News Today. "In a separate study on children in Quebec, we experience actually found significant associations between weight and whether the child cycles or walks to school."