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Water insecurity potentially undermines dietary diversity of children aged 6–23 months: Evidence from India

Dietary diversity is a crucial pathway to child nutrition; lack of diversity may deprive children of critical macro and micronutrients. Though water along with hygiene and sanitation is a known driver of child undernutrition, a more direct role of household water in shaping dietary diversity remains...

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Autores principales: Choudhary, Neetu, Schuster, Roseanne, Brewis, Alexandra, Wutich, Amber
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: John Wiley and Sons Inc. 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7083507/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31999395
http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/mcn.12929
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author Choudhary, Neetu
Schuster, Roseanne
Brewis, Alexandra
Wutich, Amber
author_facet Choudhary, Neetu
Schuster, Roseanne
Brewis, Alexandra
Wutich, Amber
author_sort Choudhary, Neetu
collection PubMed
description Dietary diversity is a crucial pathway to child nutrition; lack of diversity may deprive children of critical macro and micronutrients. Though water along with hygiene and sanitation is a known driver of child undernutrition, a more direct role of household water in shaping dietary diversity remains unexplored. Existing literature provides a sound theoretical basis to expect that water could affect dietary diversity among young children. Here, we test the proposition that suboptimal household access to water and low regional water availability associate with lower dietary diversity among young children. Using the nationally representative 2015–2016 India Demographic and Health Survey data, we conducted a probit analysis on the sample of 69,841 children aged 6–23 months to predict the probability that a child achieves minimum standards of dietary diversity (MDD). After controlling for relevant socioeconomic and gender‐related covariates, we found that children in household with suboptimal household water access were two percentage points less likely to achieve MDD, when compared with those from households with optimal water access. Children in high water availability regions had nine percentage points greater probability of achieving MDD compared with children from low water availability regions, accounting for household water access. As dietary diversity is central to nutrition, establishing the role of water access in shaping early childhood dietary diversity broadens the framework on how household material poverty shapes child malnutrition—independent of sanitation and hygiene pathways. This provides additional window for nutrition planning and intervention wherein water‐based strategies can be leveraged in multiple ways.
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spelling pubmed-70835072020-05-21 Water insecurity potentially undermines dietary diversity of children aged 6–23 months: Evidence from India Choudhary, Neetu Schuster, Roseanne Brewis, Alexandra Wutich, Amber Matern Child Nutr Original Articles Dietary diversity is a crucial pathway to child nutrition; lack of diversity may deprive children of critical macro and micronutrients. Though water along with hygiene and sanitation is a known driver of child undernutrition, a more direct role of household water in shaping dietary diversity remains unexplored. Existing literature provides a sound theoretical basis to expect that water could affect dietary diversity among young children. Here, we test the proposition that suboptimal household access to water and low regional water availability associate with lower dietary diversity among young children. Using the nationally representative 2015–2016 India Demographic and Health Survey data, we conducted a probit analysis on the sample of 69,841 children aged 6–23 months to predict the probability that a child achieves minimum standards of dietary diversity (MDD). After controlling for relevant socioeconomic and gender‐related covariates, we found that children in household with suboptimal household water access were two percentage points less likely to achieve MDD, when compared with those from households with optimal water access. Children in high water availability regions had nine percentage points greater probability of achieving MDD compared with children from low water availability regions, accounting for household water access. As dietary diversity is central to nutrition, establishing the role of water access in shaping early childhood dietary diversity broadens the framework on how household material poverty shapes child malnutrition—independent of sanitation and hygiene pathways. This provides additional window for nutrition planning and intervention wherein water‐based strategies can be leveraged in multiple ways. John Wiley and Sons Inc. 2020-01-30 /pmc/articles/PMC7083507/ /pubmed/31999395 http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/mcn.12929 Text en © 2020 The Authors. Maternal & Child Nutrition published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd This is an open access article under the terms of the http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
spellingShingle Original Articles
Choudhary, Neetu
Schuster, Roseanne
Brewis, Alexandra
Wutich, Amber
Water insecurity potentially undermines dietary diversity of children aged 6–23 months: Evidence from India
title Water insecurity potentially undermines dietary diversity of children aged 6–23 months: Evidence from India
title_full Water insecurity potentially undermines dietary diversity of children aged 6–23 months: Evidence from India
title_fullStr Water insecurity potentially undermines dietary diversity of children aged 6–23 months: Evidence from India
title_full_unstemmed Water insecurity potentially undermines dietary diversity of children aged 6–23 months: Evidence from India
title_short Water insecurity potentially undermines dietary diversity of children aged 6–23 months: Evidence from India
title_sort water insecurity potentially undermines dietary diversity of children aged 6–23 months: evidence from india
topic Original Articles
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7083507/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31999395
http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/mcn.12929
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