The Assessment of the Growth of Schoolchildren with Special Reference to Secular Changes

Conditions Associated with the Growth of Boys, 1950-1

“…The findings confirm the report by Weir (1952) that increase in growth rate is associated with slimmer physique.…”

“…But the considerable changes in stature that have occurred as a result of environmental change should make us very wary of accepting this. The finding of Weir (1952) that " secular changes in growth are similar to the differences in growth associated with differences in social condition" adds poinit to this.…”

Biosocial influences on stature: a review

“…Using a simple dichotomy of crowded (more than 1-5 persons/room) and uncrowded (less than 1-5 persons/room) he found that children living in crowded conditions were on average 2 cm shorter than children living in uncrowded conditions. This result is in keeping with a study by Weir (1952) in Glasgow as well a study of the NCDS cohort when they were 7 years old (Davie et al, 1972).…”

Family social characteristics related to physical growth of young children.

“…These are family food expenditure and birth order (Wray and Aguirre, 1969); crowding of dwelling and sleeping conditions (Weir, 1952;Stoch and Smythe, 1967); sanitary conditions and personal hygiene (Stoch and Smythe, 1967;Cravioto et al, 1967); family size, spacing of children's birth, and total number of children in the family (Wray and Aguirre, 1969;Cravioto et al, 1967;Chase and Martin, 1970;Berry and Cowin, 1954); number of pregnancies (Pollit and Ricciutti, 1968); spacing of pregnancies (Chase and Martin, 1970); mother's age, parental newspaper reading and national versus tribal language (Cravioto et al, 1967); an absent or alcoholic father (Stoch and Smythe, 1967;Chase and Martin, 1970); employment of mother (Berry and Cowin, 1954); parents' attitude to religion and future expectations for child (Young, 1970). However, these studies have looked only at simple bivariate associations between individual social variables and a measure of physical growth (usually height or weight).…”