Weight-height relationship of young men and

T lIE weight-height relationship from birth through maturity is represented by three segments or physiologic age intervals-infancy, childhood and adulthood (Fig. 1). The tran-sitional period (not shown) between childhood and adulthood may be considered as a fourth age interval-the postpubertal period. The equations showing the weight-height relationship during infancy and childhood have been reported elsewhere. 1,2 The purpose of this report is to presemit equations derived for the weight-height relationship of adult men arid women. Because of wide individual variation during the postpubertal period and because of the sparse data, especially for boys, an equation cannot be derived for this period until more data are available from longitudinal studies covering the postpubertal age span. MATERIALS AND METHODS The height-weight data from the Research Corn-mittee of the American College Health Association (ACHA) were used for analyzing the weight-height relationship of young adults. These measurements, made from 1948 through 1950 on about 160,000 students entering 103 colleges in thirty-four states and the District of Columbia, were reported in a recent l)ublication. The number of nieasurements available for each inch (2.34 cm.) of height and for each age from seventeen through twenty-four years are presented in Table I. The measurements for ages twenty-five to twenty-nine and thirty to thirty-four years were combined because of limited data. Median weights for each inch of height were computed for each year of age and age group, and the regression equations of log weight on height were derived. The median, rather than the mean, was used because it is a better measure of central tendency in non-normal distribu-tions. The weight distribution of the ACHA data showed a skewness to the right toward obesity, which is characteristic of most frequency distribu-tions for weight in this country. RESULTS For the young men, seventeen to twenty years of age, the regression line for each age was higher than the precedimig year although th