A Comparative Study on Physical Growth and Developement of the Urban and Rural School Children

For the purpose of finding out the differences between urban and rural primary school children aged from 7 to 12 in their physipue, 1146 (578 boys and 567 girls) urban children and 1378 (693 boys and 635 girls) rural children were obserbed by the author during 2 months period from September, 1968 to October, 1968. Following were the findings obtained from this study. 1. Physique In general, urban children showed superiority than rural children if their physique, There could be seen significant differences in their height, weight and chest-girth specially in the age group of 11 and 12. 2. Physique indices In the physique indices based on the height, the value of urban children showed superiority than rural children in relative weight but in relative chest-girth it was the other way around and there were no significant differences between these two groups in relative sitting height. The Kaup index showed higher value in urban children and the Vervaeck index in the rural children and there were no significant differences between these two groups in the Rohrer's index. 3. Comparing these figures with the Korean Standard Value, urban children showed superiority and rural children showed inferiority. Our children were inferior than the Japanese children in their physiques.