Patterns of physical growth in a longitudinal study of young children in rural Bangladesh

Longitudinal field studies of the physical growth of 197 children between 6 and 60 months of age have been completed in two rural villages of Bangladesh. The distribution of weights by age indicated that 90% of the village girls and boyd weighed less than the National Center for Health Statistics 5th percentile by 8 and 15 months of age, respectively. Of the children 90% were shorter than the reference population 10th percentile length by age by 10 to 13 months of age. Since the children's patterns of growth differed from those of the reference populations from North America and Europe, internal standards were created for the village girls and boys by fitting curves to their data for weight by age,…