Age-Specific Correlates of Child Growth

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Abstract

Growth faltering describes a widespread phenomenon that height- and weight-for-age of children in developing countries collapse rapidly in the first two years of life. We study age-specific correlates of child nutrition using Demographic and Health Surveys from 56 developing countries to shed light on the potential drivers of growth faltering. Applying nonparametric techniques and exploiting within-mother variation, we find that maternal and household factors predict best the observed shifts and bends in child nutrition age curves. The documented interaction between age and maternal characteristics further underlines the need not only to provide nutritional support during the first years of life but also to improve maternal conditions.

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Effects of preceding birth intervals on neonatal, infant and under-five years mortality and nutritional status in developing countries: evidence from the demographic and health surveys.

S.O. Rutstein (2005)

This paper examines the association between birth intervals and infant and child mortality and nutritional status. Repeated analysis of retrospective survey data from the Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) program from 17 developing countries collected between 1990 and 1997 were used to examine these relationships. The key independent variable is the length of the preceding birth interval measured as the number of months between the birth of the child under study (index child) and the immediately preceding birth to the mother, if any. Both bivariate and multivariate designs were employed. Several child and mother-specific variables were used in the multivariate analyses in order to control for potential bias from confounding factors. Adjusted odds ratios were calculated to estimate relative risk. For neonatal mortality and infant mortality, the risk of dying decreases with increasing birth interval lengths up to 36 months, at which point the risk plateaus. For child mortality, the analysis indicates that the longer the birth interval, the lower the risk, even for intervals of 48 months or more. The relationship between chronic malnutrition and birth spacing is statistically significant in 6 of the 14 surveys with anthropometric data and between general malnutrition and birth spacing in 5 surveys. However, there is a clear pattern of increasing chronic and general undernutrition as the birth interval is shorter, as indicated by the averages of the adjusted odds ratios for all 14 countries. Considering both the increased risk of mortality and undernutrition for a birth earlier than 36 months and the great number of births that occur with such short intervals, the author recommends that mothers space births at least 36 months. However, the tendency for increased risk of neonatal mortality for births with intervals of 60 or more months leads the author to conclude that the optimal birth interval is between 36 and 59 months. This information can be used by health care providers to counsel women on the benefits of birth spacing.

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Effect of a nutrition intervention during early childhood on economic productivity in Guatemalan adults.

John Hoddinott, John Maluccio, Jere Behrman … (2008)

Substantial, but indirect, evidence suggests that improving nutrition in early childhood in developing countries is a long-term economic investment. We investigated the direct effect of a nutrition intervention in early childhood on adult economic productivity. We obtained economic data from 1424 Guatemalan individuals (aged 25-42 years) between 2002 and 2004. They accounted for 60% of the 2392 children (aged 0-7 years) who had been enrolled in a nutrition intervention study during 1969-77. In this initial study, two villages were randomly assigned a nutritious supplement (atole) for all children and two villages a less nutritious one (fresco). We estimated annual income, hours worked, and average hourly wages from all economic activities. We used linear regression models, adjusting for potentially confounding factors, to assess the relation between economic variables and exposure to atole or fresco at specific ages between birth and 7 years. Exposure to atole before, but not after, age 3 years was associated with higher hourly wages, but only for men. For exposure to atole from 0 to 2 years, the increase was US$0.67 per hour (95% CI 0.16-1.17), which meant a 46% increase in average wages. There was a non-significant tendency for hours worked to be reduced and for annual incomes to be greater for those exposed to atole from 0 to 2 years. Improving nutrition in early childhood led to substantial increases in wage rates for men, which suggests that investments in early childhood nutrition can be long-term drivers of economic growth.

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Maternal education and child health: is there a strong causal relationship?

Ajjai Alva, Sima Desai (1998)

Using data from the first round of Demographic and Health Surveys for 22 developing countries, we examine the effect of maternal education on three markers of child health: infant mortality, children's height-for-age, and immunization status. In contrast to other studies, we argue that although there is a strong correlation between maternal education and markers of child health, a causal relationship is far from established. Education acts as a proxy for the socioeconomic status of the family and geographic area of residence. Introducing controls for husband's education and access to piped water and toilet attenuate the impact of maternal education on infant mortality and children's height-for-age. This effect is further reduced by controlling for area of residence through the use of fixed-effects models. In the final model, maternal education has a statistically significant impact on infant mortality and height-for-age in only a handful of countries. In contrast, maternal education remains statistically significant for children's immunization status in about one-half of the countries even after individual-level and community-level controls are introduced.

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Author and article information

Contributors

Matthias Rieger: matthias.rieger@graduateinstitute.ch

Journal

Journal ID (nlm-ta): Demography

Journal ID (iso-abbrev): Demography

Title: Demography

Publisher: Springer US (New York )

ISSN (Print): 0070-3370

ISSN (Electronic): 1533-7790

Publication date (Electronic): 4 January 2016

Publication date PMC-release: 4 January 2016

Publication date (Print): February 2016

Volume: 53

Issue: 1

Pages: 241-267

Affiliations

[ ]International Institute of Social Studies (ISS), Erasmus University Rotterdam, Kortenaerkade 12, 2518 AX Den Haag, The Netherlands

[ ]Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva, Switzerland

Article

Publisher ID: 449

DOI: 10.1007/s13524-015-0449-3

PMC ID: 4740575

PubMed ID: 26728262

SO-VID: 3f3f5510-e693-46bf-8f72-12b08b61d6e4

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Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.

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ScienceOpen disciplines: Sociology

Keywords: height-for-age,child growth,age heterogeneities,gradient,mother fixed effects

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ScienceOpen disciplines: Sociology

Keywords: height-for-age, child growth, age heterogeneities, gradient, mother fixed effects

Age-Specific Correlates of Child Growth

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Most cited references 40

Effects of preceding birth intervals on neonatal, infant and under-five years mortality and nutritional status in developing countries: evidence from the demographic and health surveys.

Effect of a nutrition intervention during early childhood on economic productivity in Guatemalan adults.

Maternal education and child health: is there a strong causal relationship?

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