Poor children at higher risk for stunted growth, Montreal team finds

From EndCanadianPoverty.ca

• Date: January 20th, 2009
• Source: CBC News
• Link to article: Poor children at higher risk for stunted growth, Montreal team finds

"Poorer children come up short compared to youngsters from wealthier families by the time they reach kindergarten, regardless of their mother's own height or education, researchers in Montreal have found.

"Children from families experiencing a persistent lack of money to cover their basic needs risk facing a growth delay," said Louise Séguin, a professor at the University of Montreal's department of social and preventative medicine who directed the study.

n the study, researchers asked 1,929 Quebec mothers about the height of their children at ages 2½ and 4, and the family's economic situation.

Mothers were asked if they lacked enough money to meet their children's basic needs for food, housing, heating, clothing, medication and transportation.

"In an industrialized country, toddlers whose families experienced persistent lack of money for basic needs are more likely to have growth delay even after controlling for neonatal conditions and their mothers' characteristics," the study's authors concluded in the January edition of the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health.

It was the first time the link between height and poverty, measured by more than basic family income, was studied in Canada, Séguin said.

Canada has more benefits than the U.S. such as universal health care and subsidized daycare in Quebec, but it isn't always enough, she said.

"We believe that even though Quebec is doing more for their families with young children than other provinces are, there's still much that can be done to make sure that every child has an equal opportunity to grow and to develop the best they can," Séguin said. 'Quite distressing'

Health inequities such as malnutrition and poor housing conditions that lead to illnesses such as asthma relate directly to poverty and can lead to shorter stature, added Prof. Maria-Victoria Zunzunegui, who also worked on the study.

Having a short stature can have psychological consequences, Séguin said, noting that researchers have observed that people who are short may have less social mobility.

"Unfortunately, children continue to be more highly represented in the population using food banks for over 20 years," said Laurel Rothman, national co-ordinator of Campaign 2000, an anti-poverty coalition. "It's quite distressing."

In November 2008, the group released a report card suggesting at least 760,000 children in Canada — about one in nine — are growing up poor.

Progress has been made on documenting child and family poverty in the last 20 years, but leadership in public policy is still lacking, Rothman said.

Some provinces, including Quebec, Ontario, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Manitoba, and Newfoundland and Labrador, plan to reduce poverty, but Rothman called on the government to increase the existing annual child-care benefit from $3,200 to $5,200 to help low-income families.

This study was funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, the Institut de la statistique du Québec, the Lea-Roback Research Centre and the Fonds de la Recherche en Santé du Québec."