The Global Database is a standardized compilation of child growth and malnutrition data from nutritional surveys conducted around the world since 1960. Scientists have been using growth assessment because it best defines the health and nutritional status of children while serving as a useful indirect measurement of a population's overall socioeconomic status. These were among the basic underlying assumptions leading to the establishment, in 1986, of the World Health Organization's global surveillance system for monitoring patterns and trends in child growth and malnutrition.