Socio-Economic Disparities in The Dual Burden of Malnutrition in Thailand: Analysis From The Kanchanaburi Demographic Surveillance System

Rebecca Firestone, Harvard School of Public Health

The increasing prevalence of overweight in many lower and middle income countries along with the persistence of undernutrition provides evidence of a dual burden of malnutrition, an increasingly prevalent feature of health and nutrition transitions. The paper argues that the dual burden in Thailand is to a large part socially determined. The risk of being in an extreme of the distribution of child growth is a function of socio-economic disparities in household wealth and area of residence. This paper uses data from the 2004 Round of the Kanchanaburi Demographic Surveillance System to assess the prevalence of short stature, underweight and overweight among children, following the CDC 2000 reference growth curves. The effect of area of residence is expected to be significant, but household wealth is expected to remain a major determinant of poor child growth after accounting for other factors, thus contributing to socio-economic disparities in child health risks.