Department of Economics, Institute for Management Research, Radboud University, The Netherlands.
Department of Economics, Institute for Management Research, Radboud University, The Netherlands.
Soc Sci Med. 2018 May;205:90-98. doi: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2018.03.037. Epub 2018 Mar 26.
Globally an estimated 159 million children under 5 years of age are being too short for one's age (stunted). More than one third of these children is living in Africa. Given the substantial number of sub-Saharan African (SSA) children living in households with co-residing grandparents and the negative effects of stunting on productivity and economic growth, gaining insight into the role grandparents play for children's stunting, has become increasingly important. By applying multilevel logistic regression analysis on a database with information on 344,748 children aged 6-60 months living in 31 SSA countries, the strength of the relationship between grandparental co-residence and children's stunting is examined. Interaction analysis is used to explore how this relationship is moderated by characteristics of the household and of the context in which the household is situated. Children in households with a co-residing grandmother have significantly lower odds of being stunted than other children, provided that the grandmother is in the 50-75 age range. When the grandmother is very young or very old, the likelihood of being stunted is higher. For grandfathers, no significant overall relationship is found, but our findings show that co-residence of a grandfather is associated with less stunting of girls, in poor households and in polygamous households.
全球估计有 1.59 亿 5 岁以下儿童身高低于同龄人（发育迟缓）。这些儿童中有超过三分之一生活在非洲。鉴于撒哈拉以南非洲（SSA）有大量儿童与同住的祖父母生活在一起，而且发育迟缓对生产力和经济增长有负面影响，深入了解祖父母对儿童发育迟缓的作用变得越来越重要。本研究通过对一个包含 31 个 SSA 国家 344748 名 6-60 个月大儿童信息的数据库应用多层次逻辑回归分析，考察了祖孙同住与儿童发育迟缓之间的关系强度。通过交互分析，探讨了家庭特征和家庭所处环境如何调节这种关系。只要祖母年龄在 50-75 岁之间，与祖母同住的儿童发育迟缓的几率显著低于其他儿童。当祖母很年轻时或很老时，发育迟缓的可能性更高。对于祖父，没有发现总体显著的关系，但我们的研究结果表明，祖父同住与贫困家庭和一夫多妻家庭女孩的发育迟缓程度较低有关。
