Association between household socio-economic status and stunting among under-five children in Zimbabwe

A Research Report submitted to the Faculty of Health Sciences, University of the Witwatersrand, in fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Degree of Master of Public Health Johannesburg, June 2017Background The disparities in health outcomes between the poor and the rich are increasingly widened, with conditions like stunting still dominating the public health agenda. Policy-makers and researchers need to investigate and inform policies that are aimed at reducing inequities and implement interventions based on available evidence. Objectives The study aimed to investigate the relationship between household socio-economic status and stunting in children younger than five years in Zimbabwe using the 2010 Demographic and Health Survey (DHS). The specific objectives were (i) to describe the different levels of stunting in children under-five years of age; (ii) to determine the association between socio-economic status and stunting in the under-five year age group; and (iii) to determine other factors associated with stunting in children under-five years of age in Zimbabwe. Methods Data from the 2010 Zimbabwe DHS was used for a cross sectional analysis. A modified Poisson regression was used to compute the crude and adjusted prevalence ratios (PR) and the 95% confidence interval (CI) of the association between socio-economic status and stunting. For multivariate models, variables that were identified a priori, those that had a p-value