The role of parity order and other socio-demographic characteristics in the nutritional status of children under-five in the SADC region

Sasha Frade, University of the Witwatersrand
Nicole De Wet, University of the Witwatersrand
Clifford O. Odimegwu, University of the Witwatersrand

Demographic and Health Survey (DHS) data is used to examine the relationship between wasting, stunting and underweight children according to their parity order, and other socio-demographic characteristics. Multinomial logistic regression is used to investigate the relationship between stunting and parity order, whereby stunting is divided into three nutritional categories. Preliminary results from the 2004 Lesotho DHS, however, used logistic regression to assess the relationship between wasting and underweight, with parity order and other socio-demographic variables due to a small number of cases found to be either malnourished or severely malnourished in the wasting and underweight anthropometric measures. These preliminary results suggest that the effect of parity order on the three anthropometric measures is not consistent in Lesotho. The logistic regressions performed for wasting and underweight did not show any significant results, although the multinomial logistic regression found significant results for stunting. Investigation of these relationships in other SADC countries is ongoing.