Poverty And Child Malnutrition In Bangladesh

While Bangladesh has made impressive gains in reducing child malnutrition over the last decade, levels of malnutrition remain unusually high in comparison to other developing countries, and relative to the country's level of per capita GDP. The full economic and social costs of child malnutrition are being well documented in this paper. Malnutrition impairs learning, and cognitive development, affecting schooling performance, and completion. Research shows that stunting also has a direct, negative effect on labor productivity, and individual earnings. Finally, malnutrition increases the risk of infections in a child, which in turn further slows body growth, trapping the child in cycle of malnutrition and illness, ultimately resulting in death. The empirical analysis in this paper shows that child malnutrition in Bangladesh is strongly related to poverty, and low incomes. This implies that economic growth can reduce child malnutrition in the country. The report further questions whether Bangladesh can meet the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) of halving malnutrition on the basis of economic growth alone, and, what could other malnutrition-reducing interventions be. The analysis provides useful pointers: empricial results show a much stronger effect of income on malnutrition, among the poorest quintile, than among the population as a whole, suggesting pro-poor economic growth will bring down child malnutrition, much more so than neutral growth; malnutrition is geographically concentrated in Bangladesh, meaning geographical targeting of nutritional interventions can be effective in achieving large absolute reduction in child malnutrition; results in this paper indicate some food relief programs are effective, and should be retained; and finally, the finding that malnutrition rates are non-trivial among the better-off groups in the country, suggests that cultural, and social factors play an important role in determining child malnutrition in Bangladesh.