Height and weight of Southeast Asian refugee children

Children account for a large component of the Southeast Asian refugee population, and their growth characteristics are an important part of their nutritional and health supervision. Four hundred seventy-nine children (249 males and 230 females) from 2 to 18 years old were measured for height and weight and the data were plotted by percentiles. When the growth curves for height of the refugee children were compared with those of children in the United States, the 75th, 50th, and 25th percentiles of the refugee children corresponded approximately to the 50th, 10th, and 5th percentiles of native-born American children, respectively. Males older than 15 years deviated even more, so that by age 18, the 75th percentile corresponded to the 10th percentile of US-born persons. This difference was not so pronounced in females older than 15 years. To what extent these differenced reflect genetic or environmental factors (nutrition, infection, parasitism) is not known. Comparable studies need to be conducted 10 to 20 years from now to evaluate how the new environment has affected the growth pattern in the descendents of the current Southeast Asian group.