Healthy Childhood in Kazakhstan: underweight and overweight

Bakhytzhan Kurmanov, Yolanda Pena-Boquete, Aizhan Samambayeva and Galym Makhmejanov

EconStor Preprints from ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics

Abstract: During the last 10 years, the prevalence of underweight has decreased considerably in Kazakhstan and, nowadays, it is set under 3% of the childs under 5 years old. However, the prevalence of overweight which was not important at all in the 90s, is reaching the 10% of children under 5, nowadays. This means that there is a co-existence between underweight and overweight in the same country and in the same regions. In order to design policies addressing both problems and avoiding policies which may solve underweight but worsting overweight, and vice versa, the aim of this paper is to analyze the socioeconomic determinants of the two problems. In order to estimate the determinants of underweight and overweight we run a logit model based on Multiple Indicator Cluster Surveys (MICS) database provided by UNICEF for Kazakhstan in 2006, 2010-2011, 2015. The probability of being underweight is quite low in the recent years so the fact that the family does not have the resources is not causing this problem. We should pay more attention to this variable, because the mother’s higher education is also associated with overweight. In the literature usually mother’s education tends to reduce the probability of being overweight, but this is not occurring in Kazakhstan. The probability of being overweight also increases for the wealth quintile 5th. It seems that richer families give bigger quantities or the food with more sugar and fat to the children.

Keywords: healthy childhood; inequality; socio-economic status; child overweight; child underweight (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I1 I15 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hea
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:esprep:207954

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