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Effect of mothers education on childs nutritional status in the slums of Nairobi Full Text
BMC Pediatrics, 06/26/2012
Abuya BA et al. – Overall, mothers' education persists as a strong predictor of child's nutritional status in urban slum settings, even after controlling for other factors. Given that stunting is a strong predictor of human capital, emphasis on girl–child education may contribute to breaking the poverty cycle in urban poor settings.
Methods- Data are from a maternal and child health project nested within the Nairobi Urban Health and Demographic Surveillance System (NUHDSS). The study involves 5156 children aged 0-42 months.
- Data on nutritional status used were collected between October 2009 and January 2010.
- The authors used binomial and multiple logistic regression to estimate the effect of education in the univariable and multivariable models respectively.
- Results show that close to 40 % of children in the study are stunted.
- Maternal education is a strong predictor of child stunting with some minimal attenuation of the association by other factors at maternal, household and community level.
- Other factors including at child level: child birth weight and gender; maternal level: marital status, parity, pregnancy intentions, and health seeking behaviour; and household level: social economic status are also independently significantly associated with stunting.
