A University of Otago survey of more than 1,500 Dunedin primary school children found that only around one-third had walked to school on the survey day.

A matching survey of their parents indicated that around half of the children usually walked to school less than three times per week. The survey findings appeared in NZ Medical Journal.

Study co-author Dr Tony Reeder says the findings provide objective evidence previously unavailable to those working in health, education and transportation planning.

"While a decline in the number of children walking to school has been clear, this is the first local study to nail down actual numbers and examine the factors involved," says Dr Reeder, who is Director of the University's Cancer Society of New Zealand Social & Behavioural Research Unit.

A number of factors were found to be associated with being more likely to walk to school, including distance from home, family car ownership, ethnicity, gender, age and parents' own history of walking to school.

"The distance that a child lived from school was the strongest predictor - the number of children walking declined sharply as the distance that they lived from school increased," he says.

Those living within one kilometre of their school were almost thirty times more likely to walk than children living more than three kilometres from school.

"The closure of neighbourhood schools is likely to have contributed to a reduction in the number of children who walked to school," he says.

Family car ownership was strongly associated with walking. Children from families without household access to a car were 10 times more likely to walk than those whose families had as many or more cars than adults living in their household.

"This highlights a negative aspect of car ownership," he says.

Children who attended the lower socioeconomic decile schools (deciles 2 to 4) were more than twice as likely to walk as those who attended higher decile schools.

Pacific Island and Maori children were, respectively, more than 2.5 times and 50 per cent more likely to walk to school than NZ European children.

"From a health promotion perspective, these findings could be seen as having some positive implications that run counter to the negative health statistics often reported for these groups," he says.

Boys were about one third more likely to walk than girls and children in Years 4 to 6 were 72 per cent more likely to walk than the younger children.

"These findings are likely to be related to more protective adult attitudes towards girls and younger children than towards boys and older children."

Children whose parents had walked to school as a child were 35 per cent more likely to walk to school, too. This finding indicated that engagement in behaviours, such as walking, can be passed on from generation to generation.

"Low levels of walking today suggest there will be even less transmission to the next generation, unless efforts are made to encourage and support walking as a healthy way to getting around."

"As more than one-third of children in New Zealand fail to achieve the recommended level of physical activity, it is important that we find ways to encourage and enable children to take up this regular and convenient form of activity," he says.