Socio-economic determinants to the nutritional status of childrens.

Chapter II: Review of Related Literature Malnutrition in children is very critical and alarming because undernourished children are more likely to die from common childhood ailments, and for those who survive, have recurring sicknesses and growth faltering. 1 It is a seemingly serious public health problem that can be lead to morbidity and mortality. That’s why most of the studies are concerned about the child nutrition and health that focuses on the causal factor such as the socioeconomic factors to determine the possible reason behind it and to alleviate it existence. Malnutrition in early childhood is associated with significant functional impairment in adult life, reduced work capacity, and decreasing economic productivity. 2 Researches show that the root causes of many health problems especially malnutrition is poverty. It found out that those who lived in developing countries with low family income have the most malnourished children. Asia, Africa, and Latin America have a higher prevalence of malnutrition according to the studies. 3 The children from households with a low or very low socioeconomic status had 2.5 times the risk of being underweight relative to children who came from households with middle to upper socioeconomic status. 4 As evidenced by the studies, it is clear that childhood malnutrition is associated with a number of socioeconomic and environmental characteristics such as poverty, parents ' education/occupation, and access to health care services. 3,5 In the study done by Nabeela Fazal Babar, Rizwana Muzaffar, Muhammad Athar Khan, Seema Imdad, that focused on the socioeconomic inequalities of parents of the students ages 5-11 from public and private schools. The findings concluded that the important factors responsible for the poor health status of children from low socioeconomic class are poverty, low literacy rate, large families, food insecurity, food safety, mother’s education. To alleviate that, economic, political and social

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