A Tall Order: Improving Child Linear Growth Diets, Transitions And Maternal Education

Author: Mutinta Hambayi Nseluke

Year: 2018

Category: Dissertations

Abstract

This dissertation examines the relationship between diet, maternal education and stunting. The thesis further studies determinants of childhood growth transitions. Low height-for-age, or stunting, is failure to reach linear growth potential in early childhood due to recurrent illness and chronic malnutrition (Fenske, Burns, Hothorn, & Rehfuess, 2013). Stunting is the most prevalent form of malnutrition, affecting 155 million children (UNICEF, 2017). A major concern about stunting, a form of chronic malnutrition, is that it has many effects on the individual’s health, later child schooling, and therefore has enormous economic implications. Reducing stunting is widely accepted as a smart investment (Hoddinott, Alderman, Behrman, Haddad, & Horton, 2013). Hoddinott, Alderman, et al. (2013) find that an individual stunted at age 36 months was predicted, as an adult, to have 66% percent lower per capita consumption, presenting a direct measure of the economic cost of stunting (Hoddinott, Alderman, et al., 2013). In addition, the World Bank estimates that for every dollar invested in reducing stunting, there is a return of ten dollars and an increase of 4-11% in Gross Domestic Product (Shekar, Kakietek, Dayton Eberwein, & Walters, 2016). Furthemore, Spears (2012) demonstrated that being one standard deviation taller showed an association with better future writing skills. As a result, nutrition is now a dominant feature of the global agendas. In 2010, the Scaling up Nutrition movement, representing sixty countries to date, was formed to collectively champion nutrition (SUN, 2017). In 2012, the World Health Assembly (WHA) set targets to reduce stunting by 40% for each country by 2025 (WHO, 2014), while the 2015, Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs, 2015) aim to end malnutrition in all its forms by 2030 (Baye, 2017). In the history of global development goals, reducing stunting is today explicitly included as an indicator, giving it a new focus and prominence. As stunting persists globally, there is now growing recognition that strategies that are effective for preventing stunting in a way that also address the other outcomes that are associated with, but not caused by, stunting are still unclear.

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