Relationship between social situation and physical growth in children from Santo Andre, State of S. Paulo, Brazil

Abstract

This article was based on some of the data collected in the county of Santo André, State of Sew Paulo, Brazil. Three measurements were used as dependent variables: height, weight and Kaup index (by age and sex), related to three independent variables as follows: ISSE - Index of socio-economic conditions, built considering the joint distribution of occupation and education of the father and the amount of the family expenses per capita, per month; CATANCES - meaning categories of ancestors: ("all brazilians" and "at least one foreigner"); and G.R. - size of household. Our objectives were to analyse the relationship between the socio-anthropological variables and the measurements selected, and at the same time to have a better knowledge of the variability of the population studied. We dealt with 13 ages, from zero months to eight years. As expected, many combinations of the independent variables showed differences in the measurements. An interrelationship among the independent variables was also found. There was not sufficient information (if this is possible anyway) to state that the differences in the means of height and weight were due to environmental conditions, since they could be due, e.g., to the tendency of more endogamous marriages between the migrants. It was also observed that the Kaup Index did not measure what it was supposed to, at least in growing children because of the range of relative variation of the weight in relation to the relative variation of the height. We tried to fit a curve based on the data so that the Index could have a meaning for each age. The means were tested by Duncan multiple range tests, and least squares technique of analysis of variance.