Influence of Socio-Economic Status on the Nutritional Status of Rural Adolescent Girls

Abstract

Background: Puberty is the process of physical changes through which a child's body matures into an adult body capable of sexual reproduction. It is initiated by hormonal signals from the brain to the gonads: the ovaries in a girl, the testes in a boy. In response to the signals, the gonads produce hormones that stimulate libido and the growth, function, and transformation of the brain, bones, muscle, blood, skin, hair, breasts, and sex organs. Nutritional status is a condition of the body in those respects influenced by the diet; the levels of nutrients in the body and the ability of those levels to maintain normal metabolic integrity. General adequacy is assessed by measuring weight and height. Kinanthropometry is defined as the study of human size, shape, proportion, composition, maturation, Anthropometry, the systematic collection and correlation of measurements of the human body. Socioeconomic status (SES) is an economic and sociological combined total measure of a person's work experience and of an individual's or family's economic and social position in relation to others, based on income, education, and occupation. Materials and methods: Subjects are Adolescents girls aged 10-19 years belongs to Salboni Block which is one of block of Paschim Medinipur, West Bengal. Participant’s socioeconomic data are collected through structured questionnaire, anthropometric data are collected through different instruments, and cross section study is done on 1009 girls. Results: In Tables 1 and 2, it was found that age wise there is an increase in the weight, Height of adolescent girls but BMI increases from 13 years to 17 years. In studied girls are belongs to mostly agriculture based family, in this study girls experience menarche 12.1 to 12.9 years of age, and their parents depend on agriculture based economy (Table 3). Among 112 girls, 80 girls parents are service holder, 72 girls come from daily wage labour they experience delayed menarche at 14.1-14.9 years. Table 4 represent that 785 girls post-menarcheal girls belong to skilled labour girls but Pearson chi square represent that socio-economic status and meaneracheal status do not have any significant relation. Similar trend was observed in weight and body mass index, which ranged from 35.61 ± 3.41 to 42.79 ± 5.02 cm and 16.76 ± 2.31 to 18.18 ± 2.00 cm respectively. In this study it shows that studied adolescent girls mean height is 151.02 (4.8) and weight is 44.56 (5.07), whose parents are skilled labour there mean weight 44.54 (5.08) mean height 151.02 (4.82), Mean height of unskilled labur girls are 150.82 (5.04) 44.42 (5.50)mean weight of girls who belongs to unskilled labour parents.