Observations on all births (23,970) in Birmingham, 1947. V. Birth weight related to economic circumstances of parents.

This communication presents evidence on the association of the birth weight of children born in Birmingham during 1947 with the economic circumstances of their parents. This matter was considered by Baird (1945), who recorded differences in the proportion of infants born prematurely (as identified by weight) in nursing home, hospital, and specialist practice, and more recently by Douglas (1950), who noted slight but unimportant weight differences between children of professional and manual workers. Such comparisons clearly require some consideration of the effect of birth rank (as provided by Douglas, who dealt separately with first and later births), since weight is correlated with birth rank and the proportion of individuals in each birth rank is not constant in different economic groups. As indices of the economic circumstances of the parents we have used a classification of Birmingham wards into three groups of which details, were provided by Record and McKeown (1949). Briefly, the city wards were classified using data from: (1) The Housing Survey Report (1946), which gave for each ward the number of houses: (a) back to back (b) with bathroom (c) with bath (d) municipally-owned.