I would like to reinforce what SRS says above, about nutrition and opportunity.

When I was in Germany (military posting) I had a particular friend (I'll call him X) who joined the Army at 18 so he could send half his pay home to his mother and siblings. His mother raised four children on "relief" (as they said those days) and, once they were all in school, the wages of a supermarket cashier. His father, never much of a provider, abandoned the family while his mother was still in hospital after giving birth to the youngest.

X weighed about five pounds when he was born, and had rickets as a child. At the age of 23, when I met him, he had the bowed legs and "chicken chest" typical of those who survive childhood malnutrition. He also had a curious malformation of the upper jaw and nose, sort of a sunken or "pushed in" effect that interfered with breathing, prevented his jaws from closing correctly, and caused his adult teeth to grow in higgledy-piggledy. His speech was slurred and difficult to understand, he tended to breathe through his mouth, and he always had trouble chewing.

Fortunately, X is an intelligent, brave and honourable person. His mother did a sterling job of raising him.

When he was about 35, the Army made a massive investment in my friend, then a master corporal in the infantry, and sent him to one of the best facial surgeons in North America. It was he who told Tim why his body is configured as it is -- that his bones indicated that his mother's diet was very poor, and that he rarely ate a square meal during the first 10 years of his life.

After four major operations and five years in braces, X looked remarkably like his two sons, handsome lads who, until then, were thought to take after their mother ...