Birth Weights of South African Babies

Abstract

A comparison of birth wts. of 1757 European, 931 half-caste, 7611 Bantu and 1738 Indian babies in S. Africa showed the mean birth wts. for males consistently greater than for females while combined mean birth wts. were in descending order from 7.47 lb. European to 6.46 lb. Indian. Incidence of prematurity ascended from 4.2% of European to 18.3% of Indian births.