Socio-Economic and Cultural Influences on Child Growth in Rural Jamaica

Abstract

SummaryA semi-longitudinal study of growth in children up to 5 years of age in a rural Jamaican community is described. One of its aims was to investigate the relationship between growth and factors in the social environment such as family structure, parental characteristics, housing and income. A strong relationship between growth and socio-economic variables was found. This apparently masked whatever effects the quality of care or separation from parents may have had upon child growth.

Malnutrition and child mortality: are socioeconomic factors important?

“…Undernutrition, resulting mainly from infection and inadequate food intake (Chen & Scrimshaw, 1983;Mata et al, 1977), was found to be a good predictor of death (Sommer & Lowenstein, 1975;Keilmann & McCord, 1978;Chen, Chowdhury & Huffman, 1980;Trowbridge & Sommer, 1981;Briend, Wojtyniak & Rowland, 1987) and inversely correlated with socioeconomic variables (Desai, Standard & Miall, 1970;Valverde et al, 1980;Bairagi, 1982;Bhuiya et al, 1986a,b). Consequently, nutritional status has been considered as an intermediate variable through which socioeconomic factors operate to affect mortality.…”

Factors associated with nutritional status among young children in St. Vincent

“…The age of the target child's mother was not significantly associated with the weight for age. Desai, Standard and Miall (1970) also found no association, though others have found a positive association (Desai, Miall and Standard, 1968;Antrobus, 1971;Marchione, 1978).…”

“…Some studies in the West Indies have found a similar effect (Desai, Miall and Standard, 1968;Marchione, 1978), while others have found no such effect (Desai, Standard and Miall, 1970;Grantham-McGregor, Desai and Buchanan, 1977).…”

“…The index for economic level of living had by far the greatest average magnitude of effect on the nutritional status of the sample population. Numerous other studies have found that nutritional status is lower among families at a lower economic level of living (Desai, Miall and Standard, 1968;Wray and Aguirre, 1969;Desai, Standard and Miall, 1970;Kanawati and McLaren, 1973;Levinson, 1974;Westcott and Stott, 1977;Marchione, 1978;Mata, 1978;Taha, 1979;Almroth and Latham, 1980).…”

“…This variable was relatively high in both its significance level and magnitude. Previous studies have had contradictory findings with regard to the effect of various measures of fertility or family size on nutritional status (Nicol, 1959;Desai, et al, 1968;Morley, Bicknell and Woodland, 1968;Desai, et al, 1970;Kanawati and McLaren, 1973;Grantham-McGregor, Desai, and Buchanan, 1977;Gibbons, 1977;Marchione, 1978;Almroth and Latham, 1980). One reason for this may be the fact that mothers with one or two children are likely to be teenagers (Antrobus, 1971).…”