Secular trends in growth of working boys

Employment of working children exists in our country and the rest of the world because of economic reasons and facts like population, urbanization, education, tradition, etc. Unfortunately, the children who are forced or had to work take place in a work-life that affects their process of physical, psychological, spiritual, and social progress. The starting point of our research is to search for answers to the facts that affect the growth and development of child workers. This research aims to reveal how the physical development of apprentices working in different business lines in the industry changes secularly. The study was carried out in three Vocational Education Centers and five high schools in Ankara. A total of 1068 boys, 562 working and 506 unemployed, between the ages of 14-18 were included in the study. Height and weight measurements were taken to evaluate the growth and body mass indexes of the individuals were calculated. Information on the working conditions and socioeconomic characteristics of the children was recorded in the questionnaire. To reveal the secular trends, the data in the master's thesis titled "Characteristics Of Somatotype Of The Laboring Male Children In Ankara", whose fieldwork was completed in 1999 by Barış Özener, was used and the secular trends observed in the growth of working children over twenty years (1999-2019) were used. Attempts were made to identify trends. According to the findings obtained; It has been observed that unemployed children have relatively "better" living conditions than their working peers. Working boys are shorter and weigh less than their non-working peers. On the other hand, working boys since 1999 show a positive trend in terms of both day weight and height. When compared with current growth references, it is seen that both working and non-working boys lag behind the average values. As a result, it is thought that a positive secular trend has been observed in the growth levels of male apprentices in the twenty years and this tendency is due to the improvements observed in the working and living conditions in the regions where the research was conducted. Keywords: Secular trend, working children, apprenticeship, growth and development, growth references