Malnutrition in children under five in Zimbabwe: effect of socioeconomic factors and disease.

Using data from the Zimbabwe Demographic and Health Survey (1988), this study investigates the factors that determine the nutritional status of children under five years of age. Several sociocultural, economic, and demographic variables were selected for the study. These independent variables were regressed against three proxy measures of malnutrition: height-for-age, weight-for-age, and weight-for-height. The results show that the nutritional status of a child is determined by a variety of factors that are biological, social, cultural, and economic in nature, namely, birth status, birth weight, diarrhoeal status, duration of breastfeeding, and residence. The study concludes that most of the factors that account for malnutrition in children in Zimbabwe are preventable.