Commentary: Socioeconomic inequalities and child growth

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Abstract
The article by John Pemberton ‘Malnutrition in England‘, which appeared in the University College Hospital Magazine in 1934,1 looked at the effects of poor nutrition on child health at a time when this was considered a major problem in Britain. The paper raised a key association that nowadays no one would refute, that of deprivation with poor nutrition and impaired child growth. Dr Pemberton based his observation on an analysis of the cost of providing the minimum diet, as recommended by the British Medical Association, for a typical family consisting of a husband and wife and three children, versus the statutory unemployment benefit for such a family. The comparison permitted Pemberton to conclude that they could buy at the least 48%, and at the most, 74% of the requisite amount of food to keep themselves healthy and able to work. The same results were seen for any size of family. A comparable investigation, arriving at similar conclusions, had been carried out 2 years earlier by Dr Crowden and colleagues from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.2 Based on the two reports, in conjunction with the rates of unemployment benefits in place at the time, the author concluded that the majority of the unemployed and their families must be suffering from what he called ‘chronic under-nourishment’.