SMALL AREA ESTIMATION OF NUTRITIONAL STATUS OF UNDER-FIVE CHILDREN IN SYLHET DIVISION: AN M-QUANTILE APPROACH

Small Area Estimation of Under Five Children

Abstract

Under nutrition is one of the severe problems around the globe and finds its place in the global agenda. Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) highlight the need for special attention to eradicate malnutrition. Bangladesh having high prevalence of malnutrition is committed to fulfill the targets of SDGs. Though Bangladesh achieved remarkable success in improving nutritional status of under-five children at national level, there have been regional variations. Government is planning to target need based resource allocation to small administrative levels. To do that real time, small area level estimates of nutrition will be required. Sylhet division was severely suffering from one or all form of malnutrition (BBS, 2014). This research tried to address these issues for which a primary sample of size 300 was collected from Dharampasha Upazila of Sunamgonj district of Sylhet division for in-depth analysis. M-Quantile estimation method was used to identify small area estimates at Upazila level of Sylhet division. The Upazilas exhibiting poorest nutritional status was identified in maps for comparison. Special care should be given to help these Upazilas to come out of the cycle of malnutrition in addition to the common national programmes. The results are efficient and may be adopted in the future, especially where we have doubted in the distributional assumption of the data.