In developing countries households have traditionally been considered to be homogeneous with respect to members' health. Household members share socioeconomic, environmental and genetic factors, among others, which influence a family member's health status. However, recent research has reported evidence that maternal malnutrition and child malnutrition do not necessarily exist in the same household. In other words, households exist where the mother is malnourished and the child is not and vice versa. The present study uses national survey data from eight Sub-Saharan African countries to determine predictors of undernutrition among mother/child intrahousehold discordant contrasts Child's weight-for-height and height-for-age and mother's body mass index (weight/height$\sp2$) are dichotomized to reflect undernourished and non-undernourished groups. Logistic regression techniques are used to develop models to examine differences between mother-child pairs where the mother is undernourished and the child is not and vice versa. Findings reveal that socioeconomic and demographic variables may be sufficient to describe malnutrition in comparisons where both the mother and child are undernourished and the mother only is undernourished. Comparisons involving child only undernourished pairs are more difficult to describe. Variables consistent with age specific feeding recommendations were important in some, but not all, of their respective age disaggregated models. Often the direction of association was not as expected. When gender differences occurred, female children tended to be less likely than males to be in undernourished pairs. As has been demonstrated here, intrahousehold discordance is a useful analytical technique to study household nutritional status / acase@tulane.edu
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:TULANE/oai:http://digitallibrary.tulane.edu/:tulane_27518 |
| Date | January 1997 |
| Contributors | McDavid, Kathleen Ann (Author), Coughlin, Steven (Thesis advisor) |
| Publisher | Tulane University |
| Source Sets | Tulane University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Rights | Access requires a license to the Dissertations and Theses (ProQuest) database., Copyright is in accordance with U.S. Copyright law |
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