Page 125 - IJPS-10-2

International Journal of
Population Studies Child malnutrition in rural India

200 households. Purposive sampling was applied to select The value of MEI ranges between 0 and 1. “1”
the households based on two criteria: (i) The household denotes perfect diversification, while “0” denotes total
was at the time of survey engaged in, at least, small-scale concentration (Shiyani & Pandya, 1998).
farming, and (ii) the household had children under 5 years (c) Composite entropy index (CEI):
of age. If there was more than one child under the age of
N
5 years old in a household, only the youngest child would (.
Pi lnNPi.)
be selected or any other child under the age of 5 if the i 1
youngest child denied to give measurement.
For anthropometry data, height and weight of the The value of CEI ranges between 0 and 1. “1”
children were collected in the presence of their mothers. denotes perfect diversification, while “0” denotes total
For measuring weight of the child, a digital weighing scale concentration (Shiyani & Pandya, 1998).
was used; three measurements were taken times and the (d) Jasbir Singh’s method: Percentage of total crop
average of the weight was calculated to ensure accuracy area under “n” crop divided by number of “n” crop
of measurements. Stadiometer was used to measure the The value of Jasbir Singh’s index lies between 0 and
height of children, but for children aged <12 months, the 100. Here, “n” refers to crops whose proportion is 5% or
height was measured while they were lying down. The more. Index of crop diversification (ICD) value is inversely
study used a semi-structured interview schedule for data proportional to degree of diversification (Bisai et al., 2016).
collection.
Note that “N” refers to the total number of crops and
2.2. Cropping intensity and crop diversification “P ” refers to the proportion of acreage under i-th crop to
i
To calculate cropping intensity and crop diversification, total cropped area.
the following formula was used: 2.3. Dependent variables
(i) Cropping intensity is defined as the number of Child malnutrition, which is the dependent variable, is
crops produced during one agriculture year from a classified as underweight, stunting, and wasting. The World
particular cultivated field (Deshmukh and Tanaji, Health Organization (WHO) defined underweight as a
2017). It is computed by dividing the gross cropped child with low weight-for-age, and an underweight children
area of a region by the net sown area, that is, may be wasted or stunted, or both. Stunting is defined as low

Gross cropped area height-for-age, and it is the outcome of recurrent or chronic
Cropping intensity = × 100 under nutrition connected with poor maternal nutrition
Net sown area and health, poor socioeconomic conditions, frequent
The cropping intensity has been categorized in an illness, and/or inappropriate infant and young child care
earlier research (Iqbal, 2020): and feeding in early life. Stunting restrains the children from
reaching their cognitive and physical potential. Wasting is
• Low intensity = Below 153% known as low weight-for-height, which usually indicates
• Medium intensity = 153 – 159% recent and severe weight loss due to insufficient food intake
• High = Above 159%
and/or an infectious disease, such as diarrhea.
(ii) Crop diversification is computed using several indices The corresponding scores, that is, weight-for-age
such as: Z-score (WAZ), height-for-age Z-score (HAZ), and
(a) Transformed Herfindahl index (THI):
weight-for-height Z-score (WHZ), were calculated
n based on the WHO new growth standard (WHO, 2006)
1 Pi using the WHO-Anthro software. The categorization for
i 1 underweight (WAZ), stunting (HAZ), and wasting (WHZ)
THI value ranges between 0 and 1. “1”denotes perfect scores was defined by the scores whose Z-score is below
diversification, while “0” denotes complete specialization minus two standard deviations (−2 SD) from the median
(Pal & Kar, 2012). of the reference population.

(b) Modified entropy index (MEI): 2.4. Independent variables
Key independent variables that influence the child’s
N
(. nutritional outcomes, such as age (“1” <2 years, “2” 2–3 years,
Pi lnNPi.)
i 1 “3” 4–5 years), birth order (“1” birth order, “2” birth order),

Volume 10 Issue 2 (2024) 119 https://doi.org/10.36922/ijps.0324