Abstract
Stunting (low height for age) is a crucial indicator for measuring child well-being and economic and social development of a country. Despite a decrease in overall children’s stunting in the last decades, there are still significant geographic disparities between urban and rural areas in Colombia. This paper aims to identify the role of the main determinants of children’s stunting in explaining the urban-rural stunting gap. We use data from the 2015 National Nutritional Situation Survey (the most recent available dataset) and the Yun’s statistical decomposition technique. We find that the urban-rural gap in child stunting is 7.2 percentage points. Three determinants: household wealth, maternal education, and health services utilization, explain most of the gap (92%). Each determinant explains 54%, 26%, and 12% of the characteristics effect, respectively. Public health policies aiming to reduce the gap must seek improvements in access to institutional delivery and education services for mothers in rural areas in the short term. In the long term, increasing economic wealth in rural areas is essential.
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Data Availability
Data are available upon request from the repository of the Ministry of Health and Social Protection of Colombia.
Notes
In Colombia, since 2015, the nutritional information was separated from the Colombian DHS and is collected through the National Nutritional Survey (ENSIN), which uses an independent sample of the population.
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The authors gratefully acknowledge the Colombian Ministry of Health for providing the database used in this research.
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Conceptualization: Ernesto Cardenas, Ana Maria Osorio.
Data Curation: Orlando Joaqui Barandica.
Formal Analysis: Ernesto Cardenas, Ana Maria Osorio, Orlando Joaqui Barandica.
Methodology: Ernesto Cardenas, Ana Maria Osorio.
Writing – original draft: Ernesto Cardenas, Ana Maria Osorio, Orlando Joaqui Barandica, Sayda Milena Pico Fonseca.
Writing – review & editing: Ernesto Cardenas, Ana Maria Osorio, Orlando Joaqui Barandica, Sayda Milena Pico Fonseca.
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Cardenas, E., Osorio, A.M., Barandica, O.J. et al. Mind the Gap! Socioeconomic Determinants of the Stunting Urban-Rural Gap for Children in Colombia. Child Ind Res 15, 415–432 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12187-021-09880-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12187-021-09880-7