Assessing trends and determinants of childhood undernutrition among urban poor and slum children in Bangladesh

This thesis aims to contribute to better understanding about trends and drivers of childhood undernutrition affecting urban poor and slum children in Bangladesh—a rapidly urbanizing country with one of the highest child stunting burdens in the world. The first thesis manuscript used serial population-representative data from Bangladesh Demographic and Health Surveys spanning over nearly two decades (2000-2018), and explored reasons for disparities in childhood linear growth status between urban poor and non-poor children. The manuscript findings highlighted urban poor children—compared to rural or other urban children—as a disproportionately disadvantaged subgroup for child undernutrition, and elicited maternal background factors as among primary predictors of the intra-urban child linear growth gap. The second thesis manuscript used primary data collected in urban slums and explored the role of maternal work as a potential predictor of nutritional outcomes in slum children. It found that children of working mothers were nearly twice more likely to be stunted than children of non-working mothers, but that family structures and availability of childcare support to mothers moderated the association in these settings. The third thesis manuscript then explored the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on nutritional status of urban slum children, using primary data collected before- and after- the first wave of the pandemic in Bangladesh. It found that the average nutritional status of slum children had generally not deteriorated over the one-year sample period, but variations were apparent by slum area and household migration status.