 Cultural change, growth and feeding of children in an isolated rural region of YemenPeter Underwood and Barrie Margetts Social Science & Medicine, 1987, vol. 25, issue 1, 1-7 Abstract: This paper reports a study on the growth and feeding patterns of children from an isolated region of North Yemen. Marasmus was extremely common and was associated with poor infant feeding practices--particularly the widespread use of bottled milk--and frequent infections. Despite the appearance of a homogeneous traditional society, there were significant differences in the growth of children from adjacent areas. Children from a small township serving as the administrative centre of the region grew more poorly and had a higher mortality than those from the immediate rural hinterland. While poorer living conditions and more frequent infections may explain much of the worse growth and higher mortality of the township children, it is likely less adequate patterns of feeding, particularly greater use of artificial milk, also contribute significantly to the observed difference in growth. Despite the remote rural setting of the study, feeding patterns and growth may be influenced by a number of social factors associated with 'urbanisation'. Keywords: acculturation; bottle-feeding; malnutrition; marasmus; westernisation; Yemen (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:socmed:v:25:y:1987:i:1:p:1-7 Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from Access Statistics for this article Social Science & Medicine is currently edited by Ichiro (I.) Kawachi and S.V. (S.V.) Subramanian More articles in Social Science & Medicine from Elsevier |
Is your work missing from RePEc? Here is how to contribute.
Questions or problems? Check the EconPapers FAQ or send mail to .
EconPapers is hosted by the
School of Business at Örebro University.