Determinants of the Nutrition and Health Status of Children in Rural Ethiopia: A Longitudinal Analysis
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Date
2006-07
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Addis Ababa University
Abstract
This study tried to see the determinants of nutritional status of children using longitudinal
data from fifteen villages of rural Ethiopia. An attempt was also made to see if there are any
significant interactions between mother’s education and community characteristics. By
employing random effects procedure, both height-for-age and weight-for-height z-scores were
regressed on various private and public determinants. The results show that age of the child,
parental height and primary education, existence of permanent partner to the household
head, household size and composition, and safe water source of the household are an
important determinants of child nutritional outcomes. However, most of the interaction terms
between mother’s education and community variables (such as access to healthcare and the
communities’ safe source of water) failed to be significant implying partly the unimportance
of these community variables and partly the low level of maternal education in the sampled
households. But for the significant term in the WHZ regression (i.e the interaction between
access to health care and mother’s attainment of at least a year of primary education but not
higher), one may argue that having at least a year of primary education is a substitute to
access to health care
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Human Resource Economiics