Session 6C: Nutrition and Food Consumption [all presentations will be virtual] (Auditorium 3)
Moderator: Unika Shrestha
Helping hands for the hand that feeds: The role of family support in child nutrition in rural Tajikistan
Suhyoon Choi (University of Tokyo), Yaeeun Han (Hong Kong University of Science and Technology), Milan Thomas and Hayman Win
Using data collected from households with young children in rural Tajikistan, we examine the determinants of children’s diet. In addition to strong correlations with household wealth and household composition, regression analysis shows that paternal involvement and inter-parental communication about childcare is positively associated with children’s dietary diversity. Mediation analysis reveals that these associations are partly explained by the indirect effects of paternal support through maternal nutrition knowledge, exposure to antenatal education, and use of the MCH handbook. These findings suggest the importance of a whole-family approach to improving children’s health outcomes in rural low-resource settings.
JEL Code/s: D1, I12, I15
Food security and consumption of wild foods in rural Bhutan
Panharoth Chaay (ADBI) and Dil Rahut (ADBI)
This study examines the potential role of wild foods in alleviating rural household food insecurity in Bhutan. We find that food-insecure households (defined as those who are worried about the adequacy of food) are more likely to collect wild foods, suggesting that wild foods are being consumed by food-insecure households as a coping mechanism. However, we find no significant differences in terms of food diversity between households that consumed wild foods and those that did not, suggesting that the consumption of wild foods can increase the dietary diversity of food-insecure households.
JEL Code/s: Q18,Q20
Prevalence of prehypertension and hypertension among the adults in South Asia: a multinomial logit model
Raja Timilsina (ADBI), Dil. B Rahut (ADBI); Raman Mishra and Tetsushi Sonobe (ADBI)
Hypertension has been the most common non-communicable disease in low and middle-income countries for the past two decades, increasing cardiovascular and renal disease risk. Urbanization, an aging population, dietary changes, lifestyle changes, high illiteracy rates, poor access to health facilities, poverty, high costs of drugs, and social stress have contributed to an increase in the prevalence of hypertension in developing countries. Nonetheless, little is known about the comprehensive risk factors clustering associated with prehypertension and hypertension in an economically active or industrial population of South Asian countries, such as India, Nepal, and Bangladesh. This paper uses the Demographic and Health Survey data of 637,396 individuals from India (2019–21), 8,924 from Nepal (2016), and 8,613 from Bangladesh (2017–18) to examine the prevalence and driver of prehypertension and hypertension. We analyze the prevalence of prehypertension because it is directly related to cardiovascular disease that leads to hypertension and because many people live with it for prolonged periods without realizing it. The paper finds that the prevalence of prehypertension and hypertension among adults (18–49 years) was 43.2% and 14.9% in India, 35.1% and 19.8% in Bangladesh, and 25.2% and 13.8% in Nepal, respectively. Better-educated, wealthy individuals living in urban areas of developing economies in the South Asian region are more likely to have prehypertension and hypertension. The paper suggests that different stakeholders such as medical societies, governments, and non-governmental organizations can launch preventive programs to reduce prehypertension which has enormous potential to develop hypertension as a precautionary measure. Such measures would prevent hypertension, thereby improving the overall well-being of individuals and families.
JEL Code/s: I18