Comparative findings on body size of children and youths living at urban centers and in rural areas.

The focus of this paper is on rural-urban differences in human body size during the period between ages 8 years and 15 years. Groups of village and city residents are compared on standing height, body weight, and other somatic dimensions. Wide variation is found: from data collected during 1955--1972, urban children and youths in Costa Rica, Finland, Jamaica, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, and South Africa are larger than their rural coevals by more than 3.0 cm in standing height, and 2.0 kg in body weight; while from measures taken during 1889--1910, urban children and youths in East Germany and England are smaller than their rural peers by 1.2 cm to 2.3 cm in standing height, and 0.6 kg to 0.8 kg in body weight. Intermediate differences characterize groups in Bulgaria, France, Ghana, Italy, Japan, Surinam, the Soviet Union, and the United States.