A Socio-Economic Study On The Determinants And Status Of Child Malnutrition In Rural Areas Of Bangladesh

Bangladesh has undergone significant economic growth over the past decade including lifting millions of ultra poor out of poverty. Despite all these recent achievement in economic progress, the fruit of development has failed to secure a better nutritional status among all children of the country. At present more than one third of the total populations in Bangladesh are malnourished but the figures for the children are more vulnerable where the rural children are in worst situation. Contrary to Common understanding, there is no significant difference in under-nutrition rates between boys and girls in less than five years of age group.The present study is focused to examine variations among socio-economic status in childhood undernutrition, and to investigate how the household deprivation indices of households affect child nutritional status regardless of their individual characteristics. The study also attempt to find out the current trends, patterns and issues of nutritional status among rural pre-school children aged below5years in Bangladesh.A cross sectional study of children below5years old was conducted in rural area of Bangladesh to reach to the findings of the study. Data was collected through household interviews and nutritional status of all200children was assessed using anthropometric measurement. A sample of200pre-school children aged below5years old have been taken through stratified sampling techniques. Both bivariate and multivariate analyses have been done to identify the determinants of nutritional status (stunting, wasting and underweight) among preschool children in rural areas of Bangladesh. Multivariate logistic regression analyses were used to assess the effect of the socio-demographic variables on stunting, wasting and underweight among the children.This research found that in the study area51%children are stunted,17%are wasted and42%children are underweight which revealed that the nutritional status of the study area is lower than that of national status in which41%stunted,36%underweight and16%wasted. Across the study area burden of undernutrition was observed more among the children from poor socio-economic status. In the bivariate analysis, the chi-square test reveals that, household deprivation status, education status of mother, occupation status of mother and nutrition awareness of mother and birth order are statistically significant in the case of underweight, stunt and wasted children in study area. The overall significance of the logistic regression model has been provided by the likelihood ratio test, which is highly significant. This study found that household deprivation score is a stronger determinants of nutritional status of preschool children in study area. Thus, it can be said that malnutrition is both a cause and consequences of socio-economic status which is the key determinant of the nutritional status of preschool children. The findings of this research may improve understanding of the prevalence and risk factors that are essential in order for better design and implementation of nutritional interventions to reduce child mortality and morbidity in Bangladesh.