Stunting trajectories

Description

Children are referred to as being stunted when their height is more than two standard deviations below the median of the reference WHO population of children of the same age and gender. Children who were stunted in one survey round and then become not stunted have recovered from being stunted, whereas children who were not stunted in an initial survey round and become stunted subsequently have faltered to become stunted. Those who were stunted at both measurements have remained stunted and those who were not stunted at both survey rounds have remained not stunted.

The wealth index is a composite index measuring households' access to services such as water and sanitation, their ownership of consumer durables such as refrigerators, and the quality of floor, roof, and wall materials in their dwelling. Households in each cohort of the Young Lives survey were categorised into terciles based on their wealth index in 2002, with the households with lowest wealth belonging to the bottom tercile, and those with the highest wealth belonging to the top tercile.

The sentinel sites and communities that households were sampled from in 2002 were defined as urban or rural, based on administrative definitions in each country.