A matching decomposition of the rural-urban difference in malnutrition in Malawi
A matching decomposition of the rural-urban difference in malnutrition in Malawi
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DOI：
10.1186/s13561-014-0011-9
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发表时间：
2014-01-01
影响因子：
2.4
通讯作者：
Mussa, Richard
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
Mussa, Richard
背景：儿童营养不良在许多发展中国家仍然普遍存在。婴儿期营养不良可能大大增加感染和患病的可能性，并增加过早死亡的风险。儿童营养不良也可能导致永久性影响，并使他们在成年后的生活中健康资本减少。儿童营养不良的这些负面后果表明，减少儿童营养不良对各国的社会经济发展至关重要。城市儿童的营养状况一般比农村儿童好。马拉维在这方面也不例外。本文的目的是探讨在马拉维的城乡营养差距有多少是解释和有多少是无法解释的characteristics.Method的差异：从2006年的多指标类集调查（MICS）的数据，本文使用的Nopo分解方法来分解城乡营养不良的差距。这种非参数的方法考虑到这两个区域之间的特征分布的支持可以是different.Results：结果表明，90%和89%的发育迟缓和体重不足的差距分别将被消除，如果没有城市儿童的组合特征，积极影响儿童营养，仍然完全不匹配的农村儿童。此外，如果没有农村儿童具有城市儿童完全无法比拟的对儿童营养产生负面影响的特征，那么发育迟缓和体重不足方面的差距将分别消失4%和6%。这些发现表明，对农村地区儿童营养产生负面影响的特征在差距中所起的作用很小，而造成这种差距的主要原因是城市儿童具有较好的父母教育和家庭经济状况等有利特征。研究结果表明，为了缩小营养不良差距，政策干预措施应更多地侧重于确保城市儿童所具有的有利特征，如更好的父母教育，更好的家庭经济地位等，也适用于农村儿童。
Background: Child malnutrition remains widespread in many developing countries. Malnutrition during infancy may substantially increase vulnerability to infection and disease, and the risk of premature death. Malnutrition in children may also lead to permanent effects and to their having diminished health capital later in life as adults. These negative consequences of child malnutrition entail that the reduction of child malnutrition is vital for the social-economic development of countries. Urban children generally have better nutritional status than rural children. Malawi is no exception in this regard. The objective of this paper is to explore how much of the rural-urban nutrition gap in Malawi is explained and how much is unexplained by differences in characteristics.Method: Using data from the 2006 multiple indicator cluster survey (MICS), the paper used the Nopo decomposition method to decompose the rural-urban malnutrition gap. This nonparametric method takes into account the fact that the supports of the distributions of characteristics between the two areas can be different.Results: The results show that 90% and 89% of the stunting and underweight gaps respectively would be eliminated if there were no urban children with combinations of characteristics which positively influence child nutrition that remain entirely unmatched by rural children. Further to that, 4% and 6% of the stunting and underweight gaps respectively would disappear if there were no rural children with combinations of characteristics which negatively affect child nutrition that remain entirely unmatched by urban children.Conclusions: These findings suggest that the characteristics which negatively affect child nutrition in rural areas play a small role in the gap, and that most of the gap is largely due to the favourable characteristics such as better parental education and better household economic status among others that urban children have. The findings imply that in order to reduce the malnutrition gap policy interventions should focus more on ensuring that the favourable characteristics that urban children have such as better parental education, better household economic status among others are also available to rural children.