Abstract
BackgroundHunger is associated with food insecurity at the household level and is considered as a global public health problem with long term adverse consequences on children’s health. This study aims to determine the factors associated with child hunger from a nationally representative sample in Bangladesh among food insecure households.MethodsData was derived from the Food Security and Nutritional Surveillance Project; 14,712 children aged 6–59 months belonging to food insecure households contributed to the analysis. Information on food security at the household level was collected for 30 days preceding the survey. Descriptive statistics served to illustrate the variables studied and multiple logistic regression analysis was conducted to identify the significant risk factors for child hunger.ResultsOverall 10% of the children were found to be hungry. After adjusting for seasonality, residence type and education level of household head, the variables - female headed households [OR: 1.87 (1.43–2.45); p < 0.001], severely food insecure households [OR: 10.5 (1.43–76.6); p < 0.05], households having women with no education [OR: 1.56 (1.27–1.92); p < 0.05], poorest asset quintile [OR: 1.50 (1.11–2.15); p < 0.05] and the amount of rice consumed per household per week [OR: 0.94 (0.92–0.96); p < 0.001] were found to be significantly and independently associated with child hunger.ConclusionsOut of the potential risk factors examined, our study found significant and independent association of five variables with child hunger: sex of the household head, household food insecurity status, educational status of household women and asset index. Despite all sampled household being food insecure, degree of household food insecurity status appeared to be the strongest predictor of child hunger.
Highlights
Hunger is associated with food insecurity at the household level and is considered as a global public health problem with long term adverse consequences on children’s health
General characteristics Our analysis suggests that 14,712 households were food insecure among which 11,428 households had data on hunger and had at least one child aged 6–59 months
Data used in this paper was collected through Food Security Nutritional Surveillance Project (FSNSP) that followed a cross-sectional design with the objective to determine factors which potentially contributes to child hunger among food insecure households
Summary
Hunger is associated with food insecurity at the household level and is considered as a global public health problem with long term adverse consequences on children’s health. Food insecurity is strongly associated with hunger and poverty and is considered as a global public health problem with long term adverse consequences on children’s health [1, 2]. It is a situation which can be described as “limited or. The social concept of hunger which is linked to poverty [7] can be described as a product of food insecurity [8]. Of relevance is that two thirds of all people classified as being ‘hungry’ reside in Asia, with a significant portion chronically lacking access to optimal amount of food [1]
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