Socioeconomic status and child growth in rural Bolivia

This study describes the effect of socioeconomic status on the growth of school‐aged rural Aymara children in the highlands of Bolivia, Families were divided into two occupation groups—merchant‐professionals and farmers. Children from merchant‐professional families were found to be significantly taller, heavier and fatter than children from farming families. Growth of children in the farming families was significantly related to the number of animals owned by the family. Within the total sample, parental education and ability to speak both Spanish and Aymara are positively associated with measures of child growth; but when the two occupation classes are analyzed separately, there is some indication that these socioeconomic variables are negatively associated with growth among children from farming families. These findings indicate that measures of socioeconomic status can be useful indicators of nutritional status in community level studies, but that care must be taken in choosing these indicators.

Key words:

• socioeconomic status
• child growth
• nutritional status
• Bolivia
• peasant communities