Growth Standards in the First Two Years of Life Based on Measurements of White and Black Children in a Prepaid Health Care Program

Measurements of height, weight, and head circumference in the first 2 years of life were obtained on more than 15,000 California children born between 1959 and 1967. The children were from a middle-class, multiracial (66% white, 23% black) population enrolled in a prepaid medical care program; black and white children lived under comparable economic circumstances. The growth curves for height, weight, and head circumference were similar in the two racial groups. The data for the white children agreed more closely with the recent British standards of Tanner than with the widely used older United States standards of Stuart and Meredith.