Morphological characteristics of children in present-day major Russian cities according to their parents’ place of birth
Comparison of the results of a research conducted by a team of scientists from the Laboratory of auxology of the Research Institute and Museum of Anthropology in the Arkhangelsk region in 2010 - 2011 years with data collected in the late 1980s revealed changes in morphological characteristics of the urban residents during the elapsed period towards their approximation with rural children [Godina et al., 2016]. There is a tendency towards levelling of socio-economic conditions in the urban and rural areas that is likely to explain in part the increasing similarities between the two studied groups of children. Marked changes in socio-economic and demographic characteristics may also be due to migration process, leading to the replacement of a substantial part of Arkhangelsk’s urban population [URL: http://www.vdvsn.ru/novosti/region/tendentsiya_depopulyatsii/ (reference date - 11.2.2017)]. The aim of the present work is a detailed study of the indicators of growth and development of urban children and adolescents from families of urban residents and families who have moved to the city from rural areas, to assess the contribution of migration to changes in morphological characteristics of modern urban residents. For this purpose, some morphologic characteristics of urban children and adolescents from families of urban residents and families who have moved to the city from rural areas are discussed using materials from 2005-2011 survey of Russian children and adolescents of 7-17 years of age from Arkhangelsk, Saratov and Moscow, totaling 3270 individuals (1668 boys, 1602 girls). The analysis includes calculated parameters that characterize the relative values of shoulder and pelvis diameters, chest and waist circumferences, the ratio of the longitudinal to the transverse diameter of the chest, the ratio of body length to the leg lengths and Quetelet index (BMI). Data normalization procedure and analysis of variance (one-way ANOVA) are performed, significant differences were assessed using Scheffe test. It was found that in Arkhangelsk girls, whose both parents were born in rural areas, almost all indicators characterizing strong body-build are higher compared to girls whose parents were born in the city; however, the differences were statistically significant only for the body/leg ratio (p = 0.010). In boys, differences are much less pronounced and represent only tendencies. For Saratov girls statistically significant differences were not found, and boys from families of newcomers from rural areas surpass boys - urban residents in the 2nd generation - by the values of relative chest and waist circumferences, and relative shoulder and pelvis widths (p = 0.007, p = 0.034, p = 0.020 and p = 0.010, respectively). Moscow boys and girls whose parents were born in rural areas, show significantly higher relative chest (for boys, p = 0.032) and waist circumferences (for girls, p = 0.040), the relative shoulder widths (for boys, p = 0.030) compared to the children - urban residents in the 2nd generation. Regardless of the level of city urbanization, children growing in urban area but from parents who came from rural areas, maintain the trend towards greater brachymorphy, they have on an average greater relative chest and waist circumferences, shoulders and pelvis diameters, the ratio of the longitudinal to the transverse chest diameters, BMI, but the relative leg length has smaller values. Overall, the results obtained demonstrate the stability of the whole set of features that characterize the stronger body-build of the rural population compared to urban. The convergence of urban and rural residents in several physical characteristics may in part be the result of active migration processes, leading to a partial substitution of the population of modern Russian cities by the newcomers from the countryside.