Birth weight of the Low Birth Weight children of Punjab showed statistically significant positive partial correlation with weight of the mother (r = 0.24) partialling out the effect of age of mother, sex, residence and gestational age whose effect was found to be non significant.
Paper long abstract:
Low Birth Weight (LBW) infants of the present sample constituted 15.60 % (153) of the total sample (981) which is about 8 % higher than that of the NCHS statistics. Very Low Birth Weight (VLBW) babies (<1500 g) were, however, negligible in proportion (0.51%) in the total sample. Multiple regressions of various independent variables like weight of mother, age of mother, sex, residence and gestational age on the dependent variable of birth weight indicated that only the weight of the mother had a significant beta of 0.23 with a multiple R2 of 0.08 with the weight of the newborn. Birth weight of the LBW children showed statistically significant positive partial correlation only with weight of the mother (r = 0.24) (partialling out the effect of age of mother, sex, residence and gestational age). It seems to justify all efforts at improvements in mother's diet and her body weight.