EFFECTS AND DETERMINANTS OF MILD UNDERWEIGHT AMONG PRESCHOOL CHILDREN ACROSS COUNTRIES AND OVER TIME

Priya Bhagowalia, Susan Chen and William Masters

No 09-13, Working Papers from Purdue University, College of Agriculture, Department of Agricultural Economics

Abstract: Research on malnutrition typically focuses on severe cases, where anthropometric status falls below or above an extreme threshold. Such categorization is necessary for clinicians since mild cases may not justify intervention, but researchers could find that changes in mild malnutrition convey valuable information about mortality risk and health status. This paper focuses on changes in both mild and severe underweight in young children, as measured by 130 DHS surveys for 53 countries over a period from 1986 to 2007. We find that counting variance in all forms of underweight provides closer correlations with aggregate health outcomes (the underfive child mortality rate), and is more closely correlated to several influences of malnutrition (national income, gender equality and agricultural output). We conclude that the full distribution of nutritional status deserves greater attention, including in this case the prevalence of mild underweight among preschool children in developing countries.

Keywords: Underweight; weight-for-height; wasting; child mortality; FGT measures; DHS data (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I12 Q18 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 25 pages
Date: 2009
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://ageconsearch.umn.edu/bitstream/54312/2/09-13.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Effects and determinants of mild underweight among preschool children across countries and over time (2011)
Working Paper: EFFECTS AND DETERMINANTS OF MILD UNDERWEIGHT AMONG PRESCHOOL CHILDREN ACROSS COUNTRIES AND OVER TIME (2009)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pae:wpaper:09-13

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from Purdue University, College of Agriculture, Department of Agricultural Economics Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Debby Weber ().