A comparison of growth: Spanish-surnamed with non-Spanish-surnamed children.
Weight, height, and head circumference measurements of 4,167 Spanish-surnamed school-aged children were compared with similar data from 2,322 non-Spanish surnamed children who resided in the same Denver, Colorado neighborhoods. These data were also compared with data from six other studies. Both male and female Spanish-surnamed children were found to weigh less, be shorter, and have smaller head circumferences than non-Spanish-surnamed children living in the same Denver neighborhoods. The sizes of the children in these two populations residing in lower and lower-middle class neighborhoods were closer to each other than to the sizes of children from middle and upper-middle socioeconomic classes as measured in previous studies or to the sizes of children in the recently published cross-sectional National Center for Health Statistics study. Such comparisons suggest that growth retardation is more a reflection of socioeconomic factors than of ethnic-genetic factors.
D000293:Adolescent; D001827:Body Height; D001835:Body Weight; D002508:Cephalometry; D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D003120:Colorado; D005006:Ethnicity; D005260:Female; D006128:Growth; D006630:Hispanic or Latino; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D012959:Socioeconomic Factors