ABSTRACT
The only major study of the long term effects of extreme food deprivation on human growth has examined the influence of the Dutch hunger winter of 1944-1945 upon the physical and mental development of adult males born during this short but acute famine. At the University Lying-in the Irish formed a large subset of the patients, but whose proportion of the total diminished with passing time, as Irish migration to Canada dwindled toward the end of the nineteenth century. The Dublin regressions reveal only four variables with statistically significant differences in weight at birth: the sex and birth order of the child, and the age and health of the mother. Male sex, higher birth order and higher maternal age were associated with superior birth weight performance while serious maternal illness substantially reduced mean weight at birth.
