Childhood undernutrition and multilevel analysis of risk factors: 2016 Standard DHS Survey Data

Poor nutrition is the leading risk-factor for child mortality in Sub-Saharan-Africa. Therefore, improving nutrition is critical. It requires effective multi-sectoral intervention efforts based on regular data to monitor and analyze country progress. The aim of the present study was to determine the common risk factors associated with stunting, underweight and wasting among children 0–59 months. Sample of data from 9,696 children aged 0–59-months was obtained from the 2016 Ethiopia Demographic and Health Survey (EDHS). IBM SPSS statistics (v21.0) based cluster multilevel logistic regression analyses were used to identify significant risk-factors associated with stunting, underweight & wasting. Overall, the national prevalence of children classified as stunting was 37.8%, underweight was 26.8% and wasting was 12.9%. However, significantly higher prevalence of child under-nutrition was recorded with increasing child-age-bracket and among those residing in rural regions of the country. Multivariable analysis revealed that the most consistent and common risk factors associated with stunting, underweight and wasting are administrative region (outside capital), household’s wealth index (lowest quintile), perceived birth size (small), sex of child (male), child age (later age), place of delivery (home delivery) and exposure to media (no/less exposure to television).