Ill‐Health among School Children who had Previously Attended Day Nurseries

Summary An investigation has been carried out in order to examine whether the frequent infections occurring in children cared for at day nurseries had any significant effect on subsequent ill‐health during the early school years. The study was made on a series of children who had been the subject of an investigation four years earlier. It had been found previously that a substantially higher sickness rate prevailed among children in day nurseries, and also to a certain extent among nursery school children, than among those cared for exclusively at home. Among the common specific infections of childhood it has now been found, as expected, that measles occurred more frequently among the children formerly at home than among the former day nursery children, the latter having already had the disease before starting school. Non‐specific diseases (chiefly respiratory infections and their sequelae) were found to occur to more or less the same extent in all the three groups. Attendance at these types of institutions must therefore be assumed to have no great influence on the later occurrence of these conditions. Among the children investigated, ill‐health due to non‐specific causes was found to occur at about the same level in all groups, corresponding to about 5 % absence. No definite correlation could be established between ill‐health recorded four years earlier and the frequency of absenteeism of the same individuals reported during the period of the present investigation.