All issues > Volume 29(3); 1986

Original Article

J Korean Pediatr Soc. 1986;29(3):233-254. Published online March 31, 1986.

Physicial Growth of Children in Korean, 1985. -A comparison with 1975 Growth Data-

Tae Sub Shim¹, Kwang Wook Ko²

¹Department of Pediatrics, College of Medicine, Chung Ang University,
²Department of Pediatrics, College of Medicine, Seoul National University, Seoul, Korea

Abstract

The measurement of growth of individual children or of groups of children is one of the most sensitive and commonly used indicators of child health and nutrition. In many countries, children have been getting larger during the past 50 years because they are growing up faster and their adult size itself is increasing. Hence the weight-for-age and height-for-age standards have to be revised every 10 or 15 years until this trend stops. The first and second nation-wide cross sectional anthropometric survey by the Ministry of Health and Social Affairs and the Korean Pediatric Association were carried out in 1965 and 1975, respectively. We present here new standards based on recent nation-wide cross sectional anthropometric survey which was carried out in June, 1984 by the Korean Pediatric Association. Children aged 0 to 20 years were randomly sampled proportionately to population size from 10 regions. Total 121,173 children, 61,780 boys and 59,393 girls were included in the final analysis. Weight, height and head circumference were measured and compared with 1975 growth data. The average weight and height of infants and children in 1985 were generally greater than those of 1975. Percentiles of weight-for-age and height-for-age of boys are shown in Fig. 5(0〜36monts) and Fig. 7(2〜20 years). These figures show that mean values of weight and height of 1975 is very close to 25 th percentile of weight and height of 1985, especially from the age of 2 through 16 years. The weight-for-age and height-for-age of girls compared with 1975 growth data are similar to those of boys (Fig. 6,8). A comparison of the mean weight and height of Korean children in 1985 with NCHS shows that Korean children are slightly heavier than NCHS from 1 to 12 months of age and slightly taller from 1 to 24 months of age (Fig. 9,10). From the age of 2 years through. 15 years, mean weight and height of Korean boys run between the 25 th and 50 th percentile of NCHS (Fig. 11). Mean height of Korean girls runs between the 25th and 50th percentile of NCHS from 2 to 13 years of age while mean weight runs between the 25 th and 50 th percentile from 1 to 18years of age (Fig. 12).. Head circumferences of boys and girls of 1985 are also larger than those of 1975 for all age groups. The increase of all data of physical measurement can be interpreted as the results of diminishing growth-limiting factors occasioned by general improvement of health care and. socioeconomic status of children in this country.

Keywords :Growth in 1985