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HEALTH AND NUTRITIONAL STATUS OF CHILDREN IN ETHIOPIA: DO MATERNAL CHARACTERISTICS MATTER?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 August 2012

ABDU KEDIR SEID
ABDU KEDIR SEID*
Affiliation:
Copenhagen University, Denmark
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Summary

In Ethiopia, despite some recent improvements, the health and nutritional status of children is very poor. A better understanding of the main socioeconomic determinants of child health and nutrition is essential to address the problem and make appropriate interventions. In the present study, an attempt is made to explore the effect of maternal characteristics on the health and nutritional status of under-five children using the 2005 Ethiopian Demographic and Health Survey. The health and nutritional status of children are measured using the two widely used anthropometric indicators height-for-age (HAZ) and weight-for-height (WHZ). In the ordinary least squares (OLS) estimation, it is observed that maternal characteristics have a significant impact on child health and nutritional status. The magnitudes of the coefficients, however, are found to slightly increase when maternal education is instrumented in the 2SLS estimation. Moreover, in the quantile regression (QR) estimation, the impacts of maternal characteristics are observed to vary between long-term and current child health and nutritional status.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Biosocial Science , Volume 45 , Issue 2 , March 2013 , pp. 187 - 204
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2012

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