Regional and social analysis of height variation in a contemporary British sample

Abstract

The height distributions of 11-year-old boys and girls and their parents (N = 33 000) comprising the National Child Development Study are reported. The variance in height was found to differ significantly between social classes for all three family positions (father, mother and child). Analysis of variance and cluster analysis revealed that stature distributions in all three family positions is more socially rather than regionally differentiated.