1. Relationship between stunting in children 6 to 36 months of age and maternal employment status in Peru: A sub-analysis of the Peruvian Demographic and Health Survey
- Author
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Airin Chávez-Zárate, Patricia Edith Zapata-Fajardo, Jorge L. Maguiña, Percy Mayta-Tristán, and Antoinette Danciana Quichiz-Lara
- Subjects
Multivariate analysis ,Economics ,Economics of Training and Education ,Social Sciences ,Chi Square Tests ,Families ,Mathematical and Statistical Techniques ,Antiparasitic Therapy ,Employment status ,Medicine and Health Sciences ,Medicine ,Public and Occupational Health ,Young adult ,Child ,Children ,Geographic Areas ,Human Capital ,Multidisciplinary ,Geography ,Incidence (epidemiology) ,Statistics ,Vaccination and Immunization ,Unpaid work ,Physical Sciences ,Female ,Research Article ,Human ,Employment ,Adult ,Adolescent ,Science ,Immunology ,Mothers ,Research and Analysis Methods ,Article ,Chi-square test ,Statistical Methods ,Statistical Hypothesis Testing ,Nutrition ,business.industry ,Biology and Life Sciences ,Infant ,Secondary data ,Confidence interval ,Health Surve ,Rural Areas ,Age Groups ,Labor Economics ,People and Places ,Earth Sciences ,Population Groupings ,Preventive Medicine ,Rural area ,business ,Controlled study ,Mathematics ,Demography - Abstract
Objectives This study aimed to determine the relationship between stunting in children 6 to 36 months old and maternal employment status in Peru. Methods A secondary data analysis was conducted using information from the Demographic and Health Survey (DHS) in Peru. We used a representative sample of 4637 mother-child binomials to determine the association between stunting in children 6 to 36 months of age and the employment status of their mothers. Results The prevalence of stunting among children was 15.9% (95% CI: 13.9–16.7). The prevalence of working mothers was 63.7%. No association was found between maternal employment status and the presence of stunting in children [prevalence ratio (PR) = 1.04; 95% confidence interval (95% CI): 0.9 to 1.2; p = 0.627). However, on multivariate analysis we found that the prevalence of stunting was significantly higher among children of mothers performing unpaid work (12.4%) (PR = 1.38; 95% CI: 1.2–1.6; p < 0.001) compared with those of paid working mothers. Conclusion No significant association was found between maternal employment status and the presence of stunting in children 6 to 36 months of age. However, children of mothers doing unpaid work are at higher risk of stunting. These findings support the implementation of educational programs and labour policies to reduce the prevalence of stunting among children. © 2019 Chávez-Zárate et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
- Published
- 2019