Title
The double burden of malnutrition among youth: Trajectories and inequalities in four emerging economies
Date Issued
01 August 2019
Access level
open access
Resource Type
journal article
Author(s)
Publisher(s)
Elsevier B.V.
Abstract
As part of the nutritional transition, undernutrition is globally declining while changes brought by economic development have ushered in increases in overweight and its related economic costs and health consequences around the world. We examine trajectories in stunting and overweight from age one year to mid-adolescence and from mid-childhood to early adulthood among two cohorts from Ethiopia, India, Peru and Vietnam using data from the Young Lives study. We examine descriptive data and then model trajectories in stunting and overweight status over age. Group-based trajectory analysis with five ages of overweight and stunting for each country-cohort reveals (1) trajectories of catch-up growth for a subset of study children between the ages of 12 and 19 in the older cohort in Ethiopia (20.1% of the cohort), India (20.5%), Peru (16.9%), and Vietnam (14.0%); (2) trajectories of increasing probabilities of stunting as children age from 12 to 22 in the older cohort in India (22.2%) and Peru (30.7%); (3) trajectories of early (childhood) increases in overweight probabilities (younger cohort: India, 3.4%, Peru, 19.4%, and Vietnam, 8.1%), and of later (adolescence) increases in overweight probabilities (older cohort: Ethiopia, 0.5%, India, 6.3%, Peru, 40.9%, and Vietnam, 9.4%). Multinomial logit prediction of membership in trajectory categories reveals that higher wealth quartiles and maternal schooling are protective against high stunting probability trajectory group membership, but higher wealth and urban residence predict high overweight probability trajectory group membership. This evidence suggests a window of opportunity for interventions to reduce stunting and to avert overweight development in adolescence, in addition to the often-emphasized first 1000 days after conception. A life-course approach to policies and programs to target both undernutrition and overweight should be considered.
Start page
80
End page
91
Volume
34
Language
English
OCDE Knowledge area
Biología del desarrollo Geografía económica y cultural Nutrición, Dietética
Scopus EID
2-s2.0-85067689848
PubMed ID
Source
Economics and Human Biology
ISSN of the container
1570677X
Sponsor(s)
This work was supported by the Sackler Institute for Nutrition Science , New York, NY (“Informing the Delivery of Nutrition Interventions for Adolescent Girls and Women”). Mary Penny received funding from the Old Dart Foundation . We thank the editor and the reviewers for very useful commentary on earlier versions of this study. The authors also thank the Young Lives teams in Oxford and the local country offices for facilitating and publicizing the data. We also wish to thank the Young Lives study children and their families for sharing their time and insights, without which this study would not be possible.
Sources of information: Directorio de Producción Científica Scopus