The association between height and some structural social variables: a study of 10-year-old children in Stockholm during 40 years

The associations between height of 10-year old children and mother's age, family size, number of inhabitants per room and father's occupational level were investigated over a period of 40 years. The analyses were based on samples of 10-year-old Stockholm schoolchildren born in 1933, 1943, 1953 and 1963. Family size consistently associated with height. Father's occupational level showed a statistically significant association only for children growing up in the 1930s and 1940s, and the number of inhabitants per room only during the 1930s. Mother's age was significantly associated with height only in the cohort of children born in 1963, taller children having older mothers. The influence of the structural social factors taken together on height variation was lowest in the 1953 cohort; its magnitude in the 1963 cohort was the same as in the 1943 cohort.