Household Headship and Nutritional Status of Toddlers: An Examination of Malawian Data
population health
21
Issue: 2
(10 - 2006)
The feminisation of poverty indicates that female-headed households (FHH) constitute a
vulnerable socio-economic group generally considered as impoverished compared to
male-headed households (MHH). The interest in this paper is to examine whether the
nutritional status of children in FHH differ significantly from that of children in MHH.
Anthropometric data on 1466 toddlers aged 12-59 months and several societal, household
and individual variables from the Malawi Demographic Health Survey (MDHS) 1992
were used to find out the net impact of the sex of household head on stunting, under
nutrition and wasting in the toddlers. The bivariate results show that children in FHH
(stunted – 56.7%; underweight - 33.3%; wasted – 6.7%) may not have poorer nutritional
outcomes than their counterparts from MHH (stunted – 53.6%; underweight – 31.3%;
wasted – 5.7%) since the differences are not significant. However, a number of the
background characteristics were significantly associated with the three indicators
suggesting that the results on headship could be masked by the differentials shown in
background characteristics. Furthermore, results from the logistic regression analysis
suggest that economic status has the strongest relationship with stunting. Hence the
likelihood that a child from a better economic status household will be stunted is 50% less
likely compared to a child from a poor household. Besides economic status, the role of
birth weight, child’s age sanitation and the region in which the child lives were found to
be important differentials in the nutritional status of toddlers in Malawi Key words: Malawi, male-headed household, female-headed household, stunting,
underweight, wasting.
0