Is an Impaired Nutritional Status Passed on from One Generation to the Next? A Case Study among adolescents and their parents in Matlab, Bangladesh
Alinda Bosch, Netherlands Interdisciplinary Demographic Institute (NIDI)
Malnutrition remains to be highly prevalent in Bangladesh, particularly among children and adolescents. An impaired nutritional status may be ?embodied? and passed on from one generation to the next. The aim of this paper is to study to what extent an impaired nutritional status in Matlab, Bangladesh is passed on from one generation to the next, and whether growth failure in childhood impacts nutritional status in adolescence. Additionally, it is studied whether the possible intergeneration cycle of growth failure is gender-specific, whereby girls are more affected than boys are. A lifecourse approach is adopted in this study and hence, longitudinal data sets are used. We focus on the nutritional status of two generations: adolescents and their biological parents, whereby also the nutritional status of the adolescents during their childhood is taken into account. The study population is living in three villages of Matlab Thana of Chandpur district.
Presented in Poster Session 4: Aging, Population Trends and Methods, Religion and Gender