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The purpose of this paper is to investigate how socioeconomic status and demographic factors were associated with child malnutrition as well as how these factors accounted for socioeconomic inequality of child malnutrition in Bangladesh during 2007-2011.

Data of this study come from two cross-sectional rounds (2007 and 2011) of the Bangladesh Demographic and Health Survey. This paper uses ordinary least square models to estimate the correlates of child malnutrition. The study further uses the concentration curve and the concentration index to estimate socioeconomic inequality of child malnutrition in Bangladesh. Finally, the decomposition method is used to explain socioeconomic inequality of child malnutrition in the study period.

Regression analysis indicates that child’s age, breast feeding, child’s birth order, the number of under-five child in the household, household wealth and parental education were strongly correlated with child malnutrition in Bangladesh. This study finds that absolute level of child malnourishment slightly decreased between 2007 and 2011, but socioeconomic inequality increased during this period. Children from the poorest household endured the burden of malnourishment more than those from the wealthiest households. The level of inequality also increased among the rural children, although it remained stagnant among the urban children. Decomposition analysis highlights that parental education had a significant negative relation with the average level of malnutrition, but its role was primarily centred among children from wealthier households.

An approach linking the ministry of health and education with other ministries may speed up the reduction of inequalities in social determinants of childhood undernourishment. Most importantly, there is a need for comprehensive government policies to reduce growing economic inequality and increase the relative income of the poor in Bangladesh.

This study is the first of its kind to apply the decomposition method to explain the socioeconomic inequality of child malnutrition in Bangladesh. This paper presents an enriched understanding of socioeconomic inequality of child malnutrition in Bangladesh during 2007-2011.

This study aims to examine the differences within individuals and clusters in nutritional status and identify socioeconomic factors in the nutritional status of under-five children in Ethiopia.

A weighted sub-sample of 5,270 under-five children was drawn from the under-five children data set of the Ethiopian 2019 Mini Demographic and Health Survey. Multilevel modeling was used to look at the association between the nutritional status of children with predictors.

The proportion of stunting, underweight and wasting among under-five children were 39.3%, 28.6% and 16.3%, respectively. The observed Global Moran Index’s value for child malnutrition (stunting, wasting and underweight) prevalence in Ethiopia were I = 0.204 for stunting, I = 0.152 for wasting and I = 0.195 for underweight at p = 0.000 was statistically significant indicating that spatial variability of malnutrition of under-five children across survey clusters and regions was observed. Moreover, the result of heterogeneity between clusters obtained for stunting, underweight and wasting was significant providing evidence of variation among regional clusters concerning the status of nutrition of under-five children. Child’s age in months, breastfeeding, family educational level, wealth index, place of residence, media access and region were highly significantly associated with childhood malnutrition. The inclusion of the explanatory variables has shown a significant impact on the variation in malnutrition among regions.

Enhance education, expanding the activities regarding nutritional and health services using media, health extension workers, and health institutions.

The study provides the malnutrition situation status of Ethiopian country when the survey carried out.

The purpose of this paper is to highlight the determinants of malnutrition of primary school‐age (five to ten years) children in urban and slum areas. The ultimate objective is to frame policy proposals for children's nutritional welfare.

In this empirical study, logit model is applied to 882 observations of primary data. The composite index of anthropometric failure (CIAF) is constructed to use an indicator of malnutrition.

The probability for anthropometric failure increases by age, birth‐order, female sex and activity of the child (child labor or home‐care activity) other than schooling. The parents' education, specifically mothers' education, can play an important role for child's nutritional status. Malnutrition is positively related with congestion in the household (number of household members per room), while provision of electricity, safe drinking water and underground drainage turns out to be negatively affecting children's malnutrition. The children living in slums are more likely to experience anthropometric failure.

From the policy perspective awareness about gender equity of child, adult education, growth of household income specifically of slum areas and improvement in living conditions (through public health works program) may contribute to enhance children's nutritional status.

The slums need targeted policy for children welfare regarding their nutrition in the form of provision of public utilities and income support.

From the methodological point of view, CIAF has been estimated as a measure of malnutrition. The findings of study may support academicians, policy makers and social activists for human development programs.

This paper aims to evaluate the progress made in achieving sustainable development goal-2 (SDG 2) in India, with a focus on ending hunger, ensuring food security, improving nutrition and promoting sustainable agriculture. The assessment uses data from SDG Index reports, which offer a comprehensive overview of the advancements made by 28 states and 8 union territories (UTs) in India.

The evaluation is based on information derived from three editions of the SDG Index reports, initially published in 2018 and subsequently in 2019 and 2020. These reports provide a detailed analysis of the status and achievements of different states and UTs in relation to SDG 2. The categorization of states and UTs into aspirant, performer, front runner and achiever categories serves as a crucial framework for assessing the progress.

Despite concerted efforts by India, the majority of states and UTs are positioned in the aspirant and performer categories, suggesting that significant challenges persist in achieving SDG 2 targets. The results emphasize the necessity for stronger measures to elevate states and UTs to the categories of front-runners and achievers. The persistent challenges of malnutrition, hunger and their economic ramifications require immediate and strategic interventions to address these pressing concerns.

This paper contributes to the existing literature by providing a comprehensive analysis of the progress towards SDG 2 in India, using the insights from the SDG Index reports. The categorization framework used in this assessment offers a nuanced understanding of the challenges faced by different regions, highlighting the original contribution of this study. The findings underscore the urgency of targeted efforts to address malnutrition, hunger and related issues, emphasizing the importance of sustained commitment to achieving SDG 2 for the overall well-being of vulnerable populations.

Malnutrition is one of the serious public health problems especially for children and pregnant women in developing countries such as Bangladesh. This study aims to identify the risk factors associated with child nutrition for both male and female children in Bangladesh.

This study was conducted among 23,099 mothers or caretakers of children under five years of age from a nationally representative survey named Bangladesh Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey, 2019. This study used chi-square test statistic for bivariate analysis and multinomial logistic regression was used to evaluate the adjusted effects of those covariates on child nutritional status.

The prevalence of severely malnourished, nourishment was higher for males than females (5.3% vs 5.1%, 77.4% vs 76.8%) while moderately malnourished were higher for females (18.1% vs 17.4%). The findings from the multinomial model insinuated that the mother’s education level, wealth index, region, early child development, mother’s functional difficulties, child disability, reading children's books and diarrhea had a highly significant effect on moderate and severe malnutrition for male children. For the female children model, factors such as mother’s education level, wealth index, fever, child disability, rural, diarrhea, early child development and reading less than three books were significant for moderate and severe malnutrition.

There is a solution to any kind of problem and malnutrition is not an exceptional health problem. So, to overcome this problem, policymakers should take effective measures to improve maternal education level, wealth status, child health.

The main purpose of this paper is to increase the level of knowledge pertaining to nutritional status of preschoolers and to identify/quantifying the relative importance of various socioeconomic and environmental factors which may have significant role in determining nutritional status of preschoolers in Pakistan.

Household food availability, childcare practices, and child health status being focused as proximate determinants of child nutritional status pose problems for the simple regression analysis. An ordinary least squares (OLS) estimation of the regression with nutrition as an outcome and these three proximate variables as determinants could be biased for two reasons. First, there may be unobserved variables that are relegated to the error term but are correlated with the variables included on the right side. Second, explanatory variables may exit that are endogenous or codetermined with the outcome variable and hence are correlated with the error term. The approach to address these problems is to use instrumental variables (IV) approach. The credibility of the IV approach will rest on the ability to find variables that are correlated with the suspected endogenous explanatory variables but that do not affect the outcome variable (other than through the explanatory variable being instrumented).

The results from empirical analysis shows that factors on the maternal and household level are more important determinants of child nutritional status. Food availability, childcare practices and child health (diarrhea) are significantly related to child nutritional status. Household size has negative and significant impact on child nutritional status. Household income has an important and significant impact on child nutritional status. Childcare practices are negatively and significantly related to child nutritional status. This may suggest that as childcare practices improve, they may complement the need for other sources of improved energy for preschooler's nutritional status. The findings suggest that women's education plays a very important role in improving children's nutritional status and that the nutrition status among children depends on both better sanitary conditions and on dietary intake.

Owing to data limitation present analysis employed child calorie adequacy ratio (CCAR) as a proxy of child nutritional status. For that to estimate, commonly used measures are nutrient intake, caloric adequacy ratio and relative caloric allocation.

A key message of this research is that significant achievement could be made toward reducing malnutrition through actions in sectors that have not been the traditional focus of nutritional interventions like improved hygiene conditions.

This could be the first ever effort in describing child nutritional status with the help relative more robust analytical technique for Pakistan.

The purpose of this paper is threefold: first, to measure the health inequalities among malnourished children; second, to decompose the health inequalities to identify key socioeconomic predictors for child malnutrition; and third, to assess the change in the proportional contribution of key predictors over time.

The study has used data of National Family Health Survey (NFHS) conducted in 1992-1993, 1998-1999 and 2005-2006. The information on anthropometric indicators for children below three years of age is provided; however the study is restricted to “weight-for-age,” as it is considered to be a comprehensive indicator of child nutritional status. In the first stage of analysis, health inequalities are measured among malnourished children using concentration indices (CI) for each round of NFHS. In second stage, the inequalities are decomposed to estimate the proportional contribution of socioeconomic predictors. In the third stage, change in the relative contribution of socioeconomic predictors over three rounds is assessed to suggest target-specific policies and programs.

The results highlight a slow decline of only seven percentage points in the proportion of malnourished children in India during 1992-2006. The increasing values of CIs from −0.13 (1992) to −0.18 (2006) demonstrates the concomitant rise in economic inequalities among malnourished children. The results of decomposition analysis point toward household poor economic status and mother’s illiteracy as the major contributor of inequalities during 1992-2006. During the study period, the economic status explained 50, 65 and 59 percent of inequalities, whereas mother’s illiteracy explained 40, 30 and 29 percent of inequalities, respectively. Overall, the contributors to health inequalities remained the same over time with a change in their relative contribution.

The present study is focussed on three rounds of NFHS data conducted at different time period and so it has certain limitations which should be kept in mind while interpreting the results. The study has revealed mother’s education and economic status of the household as the major contributory factors toward child health inequalities. However, one should not forget that the level and quality of education has undergone tremendous change from 1992 to 2006 which the authors could not capture considering the availability of data in the form of years of schooling. Second, since the NFHS-1 has collected the information about the caste groups in only three categories, i.e. schedule caste, schedule tribe and others; the authors have to pool the other backward caste groups with the general caste groups. Third, the authors have used the broad classification of place of residence, i.e. rural and urban area to analyze the inequalities assuming the uniform level of development across the urban regions; however there exists huge disparities within urban areas which leave scope for further research. Fourth, though, the authors have estimated the wealth based inequalities, but NFHS does not provide the absolute level of wealth and so the authors have computed the proxy measure for wealth based on the household assets which has been extensively used in the field of research. Despite these limitations, the authors however believe that the present research work has appropriately decomposed the inequalities among malnourished children and have revealed the changes in the proportional contribution of socioeconomic factors over time.

The decomposition analysis brought into light that average health indicators are insufficient for determining the right approach to health intervention programs. Health policy interventions have to focus ideally on both health averages and within and between group inequalities based on varying contributions of socioeconomic determinants.

Concentrated efforts along with the inter-sectoral concurrence, good nutrition governance, effective investment and unequal distribution of resources are pre-requisites to ameliorate the level and existing inequalities in child malnutrition in India.

The distinctiveness of this study can be primarily found in the use of all three rounds of NFHS data to estimate health inequalities among underweight children. The study has also decomposed the health inequalities to estimate and analyze the change in relative contribution of socioeconomic predictors for each round to facilitate the formulation of target-specific policies and programs.

This paper aims to examine the concept of poverty and malnutrition in Africa, implications and the way out.

Several literatures were reviewed on the causes, modes, implications and solutions to the contemporary challenges of poverty and malnutrition in Africa.

Poverty and malnutrition are two sides of a coin that are ravaging the African continent. These were as a result of underdevelopment, maladministration and lack of focus and vision by the generations of leaders saddled with administration in different African countries. Poverty in Africa embraces lack of basic human needs faced by people in African society. Many African nations are very poor, and their income per capita or gross domestic product per capita fall toward the bottom of list of nations of the world, despite a wealth of natural resources. In 2009, according to United Nations (UN), 22 of 24 nations identified as having “Low Human Development” on the UN’s Human Development Index were in sub-Saharan Africa and 34 of the 50 nations on the UN list of least developed countries are in Africa. The UN Food and Agriculture Organization estimates that 233 million people in sub-Saharan Africa were hungry/undernourished in 2014-2016 (its most recent estimate). In total, 795 million people were hungry worldwide. According to the World Bank, sub-Saharan Africa was the area with the second largest number of hungry people, as Asia had 512 million, mainly due to the much larger population of Asia when compared to sub-Saharan Africa. World Bank also reported in 2012 that sub-Saharan Africa Poverty and Equity Data was 501 million people, or 47 per cent Poverty has also been reported as the principal cause of hunger in Africa and the principal causes of poverty have been found to be harmful economic systems, conflict, environmental factors such as drought and climate change and population growth.

This study examined the concept of poverty and malnutrition in Africa, the implications and the way out.

Improving the health of children under the age of five is one of the main objectives of primary healthcare services in most developing countries. The purpose of this paper is to identify the nutritional status of children under the age of five and its impact on cognitive function.

The cross-sectional study was carried out in a semi-urban community in south-western Nigeria. The sample consisted of 220 school children under the age of five. Anthropometric measurements including weight, height and mid arm circumference were carried out to determine the nutritional status of the children. Cognitive function of the children was assessed using a developmental checklist developed by the American Academy of Pediatrics and their performance was graded as good, fair and poor.

The overall prevalence of malnutrition in this study was low with stunting, underweight and wasting recording 8.2, 6.8 and 1.8 percent, respectively thereby making stunting the most common malnutrition indicator in this study. A large proportion of the children (88.6 percent) had good cognitive performance while 11.4 and 5.5 percent had fair and poor cognitive performance, respectively. Among the various malnutrition indicators measured in this study, stunting was found to have a statistically significant association with cognitive development (p=0.005).Stunted children have multiple functional disadvantages that persist throughout childhood and poor nutrition almost certainly plays a role. This paper calls for a need for the Nigerian Government to intervene by ensuring that policies are implemented that will ensure that health and nutritional needs of preschool children are guaranteed right from conception.

In view of the importance of nutrition for cognition in children, this research has shown that the cognitive function of preschool children can be affected by stunting and it has contributed to global data on nutrition and cognition particularly in South-Western Nigeria.

UN Secretary General Kofi Annan in the opening quote reminds us that despite the medical and public health gains of recent decades, benefits have not accrued to the most vulnerable of citizens, children (DeYoung & Lynch, 2002). For decades research has quantified the links between poverty, ill-health and the global burdens imposed by disease. Yet, the distribution of poverty and disease has changed little over the last thirty years, continuing to be concentrated among poor children in both emerging and developed nations (Bellamy, 1999; Brundtland, 1999). Fundamentally, the complex web of poverty relegates youth to a lifetime of suffering because of the relationships between and among resources, health and neurological development.