ABSTRACT
In Chapter 4 the importance of socioeconomic factors in determining children's growth and development is discussed based on a quantitative analysis of the five year study of the El Progreso sample. Further, Chapters 4, 5 and 6 provide a detailed description of what socioeconomic differences mean in terms of family environment and community structure. These findings present a composite description of the sample and a synthesis of the community data. However, the quantitative analysis and community ethnography do not answer some important questions concerning the differences between families, the variations in their strategies to survive in a difficult environment, and what other factors--other than socioeconomic ones--effect whether a child will be malnourished or healthy. Socioeconomic status predicts 60% of the variance of whether a child will be stunted which suggests that there is a range of environmental influences of which socioeconomic status is the most important, but not the sole determinant of poor growth.
