Malnutrition Gap as a New Measure of Child Malnutrition : A Global Application

"Leaving no one behind" is an overarching principle of the Sustainable Development Goals. Many countries are prioritizing resources for those who are furthest behind. Existing malnutrition indicators—underweight, stunting,...

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Main Authors: Feng, Juan, Alam, Shamma, Eozenou, Patrick Hoang-Vu
Format: Working Paper
Language:English
Published: World Bank, Washington, DC 2018
Subjects:
Online Access:http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/396911543937034298/Malnutrition-Gap-as-a-New-Measure-of-Child-Malnutrition-A-Global-Application
http://hdl.handle.net/10986/30986
id okr-10986-30986
recordtype oai_dc
spelling okr-10986-309862021-12-21T12:22:25Z Malnutrition Gap as a New Measure of Child Malnutrition : A Global Application Feng, Juan Alam, Shamma Eozenou, Patrick Hoang-Vu NUTRITION MALNUTRITION CHILD HEALTH CHILD NUTRITION STUNTING WASTING MEASUREMENT UNDERWEIGHT GAP MEASURES HEADCOUNT MEASURES SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT GOALS "Leaving no one behind" is an overarching principle of the Sustainable Development Goals. Many countries are prioritizing resources for those who are furthest behind. Existing malnutrition indicators—underweight, stunting, wasting, overweight, and severe wasting—are headcount ratios. They do not capture how far behind malnourished children are relative to the World Health Organization growth standards. To understand the severity of malnutrition, this study develops a new malnutrition measurement, using the method originally developed for estimating poverty. This study estimates the prevalence, gap, and gap squared for stunting, wasting, overweight, and underweight, using data from 94 developing countries over 20 years. The results show that although in most cases the headcount measures and gap measures are moving in the same direction, in many other cases, they are moving in opposite directions. Moreover, employing the new measures, the study can identify countries that have low levels of headcount for a malnutrition measure but comparatively high severity of malnutrition according to the gap measures, and vice versa. This suggests that these new malnutrition measures provide additional information on the severity of malnutrition that is not possible to be known from headcount measures. These new measures of the severity of malnutrition can therefore improve the monitoring of child malnutrition across countries, and consequently help countries to achieve their Sustainable Development Goals. 2018-12-11T18:35:59Z 2018-12-11T18:35:59Z 2018-12 Working Paper http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/396911543937034298/Malnutrition-Gap-as-a-New-Measure-of-Child-Malnutrition-A-Global-Application http://hdl.handle.net/10986/30986 English Policy Research Working Paper;No. 8664 CC BY 3.0 IGO http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/igo World Bank World Bank, Washington, DC Publications & Research :: Policy Research Working Paper Publications & Research
repository_type Digital Repository
institution_category Foreign Institution
institution Digital Repositories
building World Bank Open Knowledge Repository
collection World Bank
language English
topic NUTRITION
MALNUTRITION
CHILD HEALTH
CHILD NUTRITION
STUNTING
WASTING
MEASUREMENT
UNDERWEIGHT
GAP MEASURES
HEADCOUNT MEASURES
SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT GOALS
spellingShingle NUTRITION
MALNUTRITION
CHILD HEALTH
CHILD NUTRITION
STUNTING
WASTING
MEASUREMENT
UNDERWEIGHT
GAP MEASURES
HEADCOUNT MEASURES
SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT GOALS
Feng, Juan
Alam, Shamma
Eozenou, Patrick Hoang-Vu
Malnutrition Gap as a New Measure of Child Malnutrition : A Global Application
relation Policy Research Working Paper;No. 8664
description "Leaving no one behind" is an overarching principle of the Sustainable Development Goals. Many countries are prioritizing resources for those who are furthest behind. Existing malnutrition indicators—underweight, stunting, wasting, overweight, and severe wasting—are headcount ratios. They do not capture how far behind malnourished children are relative to the World Health Organization growth standards. To understand the severity of malnutrition, this study develops a new malnutrition measurement, using the method originally developed for estimating poverty. This study estimates the prevalence, gap, and gap squared for stunting, wasting, overweight, and underweight, using data from 94 developing countries over 20 years. The results show that although in most cases the headcount measures and gap measures are moving in the same direction, in many other cases, they are moving in opposite directions. Moreover, employing the new measures, the study can identify countries that have low levels of headcount for a malnutrition measure but comparatively high severity of malnutrition according to the gap measures, and vice versa. This suggests that these new malnutrition measures provide additional information on the severity of malnutrition that is not possible to be known from headcount measures. These new measures of the severity of malnutrition can therefore improve the monitoring of child malnutrition across countries, and consequently help countries to achieve their Sustainable Development Goals.
format Working Paper
author Feng, Juan
Alam, Shamma
Eozenou, Patrick Hoang-Vu
author_facet Feng, Juan
Alam, Shamma
Eozenou, Patrick Hoang-Vu
author_sort Feng, Juan
title Malnutrition Gap as a New Measure of Child Malnutrition : A Global Application
title_short Malnutrition Gap as a New Measure of Child Malnutrition : A Global Application
title_full Malnutrition Gap as a New Measure of Child Malnutrition : A Global Application
title_fullStr Malnutrition Gap as a New Measure of Child Malnutrition : A Global Application
title_full_unstemmed Malnutrition Gap as a New Measure of Child Malnutrition : A Global Application
title_sort malnutrition gap as a new measure of child malnutrition : a global application
publisher World Bank, Washington, DC
publishDate 2018
url http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/396911543937034298/Malnutrition-Gap-as-a-New-Measure-of-Child-Malnutrition-A-Global-Application
http://hdl.handle.net/10986/30986
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