The Relationship Between Poverty and Children’s Nutritional Status: Evidence from Nigeria

Aregbeshola, B.S.;, Salmasi, L.; and Shomali, K.W.A.;

Health, Econometrics and Data Group (HEDG) Working Papers from HEDG, c/o Department of Economics, University of York

Abstract: People living in poverty generally do not have proper access to food and nutrition, with negative consequences for their children’s health and possible long-term negative effects in terms of human capital accumulation, health, and labor market achievements. In this paper, we examine the relationship between poverty and children’s nutritional status using the 2008, 2013, and 2018 Nigeria Demographic and Health Surveys. We adopt an approach based on instrumental variables to control for endogeneity. Our study finds that poverty reduced weight-for-height, weight-for-age, and height-for-age Z-scores by 21.32, 30.33, and 27.67 percentage points, respectively. We also find that poverty increases the likelihood of a child being wasted, underweight, and stunted by 5.99, 5.49, and 6.99 percentage points. We show that the mechanisms underlying the relationship between poverty and children’s nutritional status are health care service utilization, maternal health care service use, household nutrition, child-specific nutrition intake, maternal nutrition, and illness episodes.

Keywords: poverty; wasting; underweight; stunting; Nigeria (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C18 C26 I10 I12 I31 I32 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025-08
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dev and nep-inv
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