Agricultural Production Diversity and Child Nutritional Outcomes in Rural Myanmar

Abstract

This paper empirically investigates the links between agricultural diversity and child nutritional status in rural Myanmar. The data for this analysis come from a two-round survey of households conducted in six rural townships in Myanmar between February 2016 and November 2017. Using the child anthropometric measures haz, whz, waz, stunting, and underweight, our results show that child nutritional status worsened between 2016 and 2017. Our empirical results show that greater agricultural production diversity was associated with poorer anthropometric outcomes among young children aged between 6 and 35 months. Home garden ownership is statistically significant and positively associated with younger children’s anthropometric outcomes, whilst migration is negatively associated with wasting and underweight probability of older children. Livelihood diversification through migration is an important channel to address child undernutrition in our study areas in rural Myanmar, particularly in the long term when children grow older.