According to the report children from disadvantaged families are more likely to be born underweight, and are two and a half times as likely to suffer chronic illness as toddlers.
They are also twice as likely to have cerebral palsy.
The report, Unhealthy Lives, found children living in disadvantaged families are more than three times as likely to have mental health problems as those in well-off families, and are more likely to have asthma and go on to develop diabetes and heart failure.
Nick Spencer, professor of child health at the University of Warwick and one of the report's authors, said: "If poverty were an infection then we would be in the midst of a full-scale epidemic."
Dr Patricia Hamilton, president of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, added: "Ill health in children and young people is directly related to levels of poverty. The government must fulfil its promise to break the ongoing cycle of deprivation by lifting families out of poverty."
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