Household socio-economic status, social support and infant and child growth in urban South Africa: a cohort study from 1990

The rapid political, economic and social changes experienced by South Africans from 1991, combined with socio-economic inequalities ingrained in South African society at this time, made the early 1990s a unique and well-suited period to investigate child growth inequalities. Furthermore, recent estimates of low birth weight and stunting (≤ 3 years), showing prevalence of 15% (Chen et aI., 2006) and 25.5% (Labadarios, 1999) respectively, indicate that poor intrauterine and postnatal growth patterns continue to represent considerable public health issues in this setting. This study aimed to investigate associations of birth measures of household SES and social support with infant/child growth in urban South Africa. Anthropometric, demographic, socioeconomic and social support data for quantitative analyses were obtained from the 1990 Bt20 cohort (n=3275). [Continues.]