Social Inequality in Height

Abstract

The height of children may be used to indicate social inequality. The aim of this study was to analyze the difference in height of the socially more and less privileged 10-year-old Helsinki children in 1963 and 1991 and to compare the social gap to the corresponding gap in 1943, 1963 and 1991 in previous studies of Stockholm children. The difference in mean height of the Helsinki boys in 1963 was 4.5 cm ( p<0.001) and for girls 4.4 cm ( p<0.001). In Stockholm the corresponding differences in 1963 were negligible. Twenty years earlier (in 1943) it was 3.2 cm ( p<0.001) in Stockholm. In 1991 the difference was 1.4 cm ( p<0.05) for boys and 0.6 cm (n.s.) for girls in Helsinki, equivalent to the findings of the Stockholm children at the same time. The well-off Helsinki children already in 1963 were as tall as the Stockholm children. Thus, the decrease of the social gap in height from 1963 to 1991 in Helsinki seems to be mainly due to an increase in height of the socially less privileged children, exactly what was previously found for the Stockholm children between 1943 and 1963. Would the time for the equalization of height mirror the time for the development of the welfare states in Finland and Sweden respectively?