Dietary diversity and children anthropometric outcomes : a quantile regression analysis

This study investigates the relationship between dietary diversity, a measure of diet quality, and health outcomes of young children. We examine this relationship not just at the mean, but also at different points of the conditional distributions of weight-for-age (WAZ) and height-for-age (HAZ) z-scores for children below six years of age, using quantile regression method. We construct five different dietary diversity measures using 14-day recall food consumption data collected in a primary survey conducted in in the rural-urban interface of Bangalore. Our results indicate no significant association between household dietary diversity and anthropometric outcomes of children below 6 years of age for any of the five measures.