Women's Individual Fertility on Children's Stunting in Bangladesh

Women's individual level fertility is a major public health concern and is recognized as a serious problem in our country. The nutritional status of children is a sensitive indicator of a country's socioeconomic characteristics as well as demographic characteristics. The research work used Bangladesh Demographic and Health Survey 2011 (BDHS 2011) data. In this study, some socioeconomic and demographic variables like mother's education level, father's education level, father's occupation, wealth status, sex of child, age of child, mother age, mothers currently pregnant, preceding birth interval, place of residence and region were used. ANOVA F-test shows that there exists strong positive association with stunting between two continuous variables number of siblings and child age (in months). The results from this study provide evidence for a relation between women's individual level fertility and nutritional status of children in Bangladesh. These findings persisted, even after adjusting for socioeconomic and demographic related characteristics. The findings may help policy makers, project planners and government in designing and implementing the nutritional programs in Bangladesh.