Giving poor families land on which to grow crops has been shown to improve child nutrition. New research also shows that giving families non-agricultural land and better housing also is beneficial for children's growth and nutrition. Results of the study of child malnutrition in rural Guatemala will be presented Sunday, May 1, at the Pediatric Academic Societies (PAS) annual meeting in Denver.

Guatemala's rural populations suffer from one of the most unequal land distributions in Latin America. About 2 percent of the population owns 70 percent of all productive farmland. To remedy（补救，纠正） this, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have raised money to buy private land and donate it to poor farmers so they can grow crops. However, urbanization and lack of land have led NGOs to distribute land for housing instead of farming.

Asya Agulnik, MD, MPH, and her colleagues looked at the effects of this change in land distribution on child health in coffee-growing areas of Guatemala. Researchers compared child malnutrition rates in five villages, four of which received non-agricultural land and brick houses in organized communities, along with improved sanitation（环境卫生） . Families in the fifth community continued to live in squatter settlements（违章居留地） on plantations.

Using WHO growth curves, investigators compared weight-for-age measurements of 242 children in these communities before and after the land distribution.

Before the moves, about 37 percent of children younger than 38 months were moderately malnourished, while just over 7 percent were severely malnourished. Twenty months after families received land and houses, malnutrition rates dropped among children in the same age group; roughly 19 percent were diagnosed with moderate malnutrition, and 5 percent were severely malnourished. Older children who were not breastfeeding at the time their family received land allotments（土地分配） and housing experienced the greatest nutritional benefit.

Meanwhile, children who remained in squatter settlements experienced worsening malnutrition.