Griffiths et al paper Human Biology and Poverty_resubmitted_without track changes.pdf (310.07 kB)
Do socio-economic inequalities in infant growth in rural India operate through maternal size and birth weight?
journal contribution
posted on 2016-01-14, 11:16 authored by Paula GriffithsPaula Griffiths, Nagalla Balakrishna, Sylvia Fernandez Rao, Will JohnsonWill JohnsonBackground
3·1 million young children die every year from undernutrition. Greater understanding of associations between socio-economic status (SES) and the biological factors that shape undernutrition are required to target interventions.
Aim
To establish whether SES inequalities in undernutrition, proxied by infant size at 12 months, operate through maternal and early infant size measures.
Participants and Methods
The sample comprised 347 Indian infants born in 60 villages in rural Andhra Pradesh 2005-2007. Structural equation path models were applied to decompose the total relationship between SES (standard of living index) and length and weight for age Z-scores (LAZ/ WAZ) at 12 months into direct and indirect (operating through maternal BMI and height, birthweight Z-score and LAZ/WAZ at 6 months) paths.
Results
SES had a direct positive association with LAZ (Standardized coefficient = 0.08, 95% CI = 0.02, 0.13) and WAZ at age 12 months (Standardized coefficient = 0.08, 95%CI = 0.02, 0.15). It also had additional indirect positive associations through increased maternal height and subsequently increased birthweight and WAZ/LAZ at 6 months, accounting for 35% and 53% of the total effect for WAZ and LAZ respectively.
Conclusion
Findings support targeting evidence based growth interventions towards infants from the poorest families with the shortest mothers. Increasing SES can improve growth for two generations.
Funding
The IFS received its funding under the Indo-US joint initiative on Maternal Child Health Development Research between the National Institute of Health, USA (5 R01 HD042219-S1) and the Indian Council of Medical Research, India, with additional funding from UNICEF/New York.
History
School
- Sport, Exercise and Health Sciences
Published in
Annals of Human BiologyCitation
GRIFFITHS, P.L. ...et al., 2016. Do socio-economic inequalities in infant growth in rural India operate through maternal size and birth weight?. Annals of Human Biology, 43(2), pp.154-163.Publisher
© Taylor & FrancisVersion
- AM (Accepted Manuscript)
Publisher statement
This work is made available according to the conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) licence. Full details of this licence are available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/Publication date
2016Notes
This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Annals of Human Biology on 05 Feb 2016, available online: http://dx.doi.org/10.3109/03014460.2015.1134656ISSN
1464-5033Publisher version
Language
- en