Patterns of child growth in Papua New Guinea and their relation to environmental, dietary and socioeconomic factors--further analyses of the 1982-1983 Papua New Guinea National Nutrition Survey.

Child growth and nutrition in rural Papua New Guinea vary widely among different environments. The 1982-1983 National Nutrition Survey (NNS) was re-analyzed in order to relate patterns of growth to a wide range of dietary, socioeconomic, agricultural and demographic variables. Anthropometric indices of growth were calculated based on an internal Papua New Guinean growth standard constructed from the children included in the NNS. Children were subsequently classified as stunted, wasted or underweight if they were more than 1 SD below the national mean. Regression analyses on 15,975 children show that variation in growth among environments can largely be accounted for by differences in diet, although significant differences in relation to altitude, relief and rainfall patterns persist. Other important predictors of child growth and nutrition included socioeconomic status, maternal education, marital status of the mother and father's occupation. Variance components analysis revealed that most of the geographical variation in child growth was accounted for by the environmental, dietary, socioeconomic, agricultural and demographic variables included in the regression analyses. Most of the factors which were found to be associated with child growth in this study are related in one form or another to differences in local subsistence agriculture, which may therefore be the main determinant of child growth and nutrition patterns in Papua New Guinea.