A review of the social patterning and significance of measures of height, weight, blood pressure and respiratory function.

This paper reviews evidence about the social patterning and relationship to life chances of four measures of health, development or functioning; namely height, weight, blood pressure and respiratory function. It argues that these are useful supplements to more commonly used measures of 'health' such as mortality rates, morbidity rates, or self reports of health, and recommends the increased use of such direct physical measures in routine statistics and special health surveys.