The International Context of the Double Burden of Child Malnutrition

Katie Bates, London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE)

This paper explores a new nutritional crisis that is emerging affecting children under five years of age – the Double Burden of Child Malnutrition (DBCM), where children are concurrently stunted and overweight. A cross-country comparison of the explanatory pattern of the prevalence of stunted-overweight children based upon anthropometric data from the Demographic and Health Surveys and the UNICEF Multiple Indicator Cluster Surveys for low and middle income countries (2004-2009) is undertaken utilising linear regression models. Preliminary results have highlighted that rapid socioeconomic development is associated with the development of a DBCM.