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The Distribution Of Child Nutritional Status Across Countries And Over Time

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  • Bhagowalia, Priya
  • Chen, Susan E.
  • Masters, William A.

Abstract

Malnutrition is manifested in various degrees of both underweight and overweight, with large differences and rapid changes in their prevalence and severity. This paper introduces a new approach to characterizing the distribution of a population’s nutritional status, to help analyze changes in that distribution over time and across countries. Our method draws on the poverty literature to construct Foster-Greer-Thorbecke measures for the incidence and severity of under and overweight, based on deviations in either direction from the median of a healthy population. We apply this median-based measure to the nutritional status of over 400,000 preschool children, as measured in 130 DHS surveys covering 53 countries over a period from 1986 to 2006. Unlike conventional threshold-based methods, the new approach counts changes in every child’s bodyweight. We find that this offers a more sensitive measure of differences across countries and changes over time, showing in particular that children’s bodyweights are closely linked to local agricultural output and gender equality as well as real GDP per capita.

Suggested Citation

  • Bhagowalia, Priya & Chen, Susan E. & Masters, William A., 2008. "The Distribution Of Child Nutritional Status Across Countries And Over Time," Working papers 6147, Purdue University, Department of Agricultural Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:ags:puaewp:6147
    DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.6147
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    Cited by:

    1. G. Naline & Brinda Viswanathan, 2016. "Revisiting the Determinants of Child Anthropometric Indicators in India Using Seemingly Unrelated Regressions Model," Indian Journal of Human Development, , vol. 10(3), pages 336-352, December.
    2. G. Naline & Brinda Viswanathan, 2016. "Revisiting the Determinants of Child Anthropometric Indicators in India Using Seemingly Unrelated Regressions Model," Working Papers 2016-143, Madras School of Economics,Chennai,India.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety; Food Security and Poverty;

    JEL classification:

    • I12 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Health Behavior
    • Q18 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Agriculture - - - Agricultural Policy; Food Policy; Animal Welfare Policy

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