Exploring minimum dietary diversity among cambodian children using four rounds of demographic and health survey.

Dietary diversity among children is a crucial factor influencing their nutritional status; therefore, this paper uses data from four rounds of the Cambodia Demographic and Health Survey (CDHS) to examine the minimum dietary diversity among children aged 6-23 months. Multilevel binary regression is used to evaluate the variation in minimum dietary diversity at the cluster and province levels. The results show that nearly half of Cambodian children consistently lacked access to vitamin A-rich fruits and vegetables. Although the prevalence of inadequate minimum dietary diversity (MDD) among children significantly dropped from 76% in 2005 to 51% in 2021-2022, it is still high and needs attention. A decomposition analysis (Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition) was further used to understand the drivers of this temporal change in dietary diversity. The empirical results show that clusters represented the most significant source of geographic variation with respect to all eight food groups and MDD. Nutritional policy should improve education and awareness, reduce socio-economic disparities, leverage media, and promote full antenatal care to improve dietary diversity in Cambodia. Initiatives targeting the enhancement of insufficient minimum dietary diversity intake should encompass individual aspects and be customized to suit geographic and community settings.

The impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on micro, small, and medium enterprises in Asia and their digitalization responses.

Soon after the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, many governments began extending financial and other forms of support to micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs) and their workers because smaller firms are more vulnerable to negative shocks to their supply chain, labor supply, and final demand for goods and services than larger firms. Since MSMEs are diverse, however, the severity of the pandemic's impact on them varies considerably depending on their characteristics. Using online survey data of MSMEs from eight developing economies in South, Southeast, and Northeast Asia, this paper attempts to deepen our understanding of the impact of the pandemic on MSMEs, especially their employment, sales revenue, and cash flow. It also characterizes those firms that began participating in online commerce and tries to determine how their use of online commerce and their employment are related in this difficult time. This paper also examines the government support that MSMEs have received and the extent to which it has satisfied their support needs.

Prevalence of prehypertension and hypertension among the adults in South Asia: A multinomial logit model.

Hypertension has been the most common non-communicable disease in low and middle-income countries for the past two decades, increasing cardiovascular and renal disease risk. Urbanization, aging, dietary and lifestyle changes, high illiteracy rates, poor access to health facilities, poverty, high costs of drugs, and social stress have contributed to an increase in the prevalence of hypertension in developing countries. Nonetheless, little is known about the comprehensive risk factors associated with prehypertension and hypertension among economically active adult populations of South Asia, such as India, Nepal, and Bangladesh. This paper uses the Demographic and Health Survey data of 637,396 individuals from India (2019-21), 8,924 from Nepal (2016), and 8,613 from Bangladesh (2017-18) to examine the prevalence and driver of prehypertension and hypertension. We analyze the prevalence of prehypertension because it leads to hypertension and is directly related to cardiovascular disease, and many people live with it for prolonged periods without realizing it. The paper finds, among other things, that the prevalence of prehypertension and hypertension among adults (18-49 years) is 43.2 and 14.9% in India, 35.1% and 19.8% in Bangladesh, and 25.2% and 13.8% in Nepal, respectively. Better educated, wealthy individuals living in urban areas of developing economies in the South Asian region are more likely to have prehypertension and hypertension. The paper suggests the urgent need to launch preventive programs to reduce prehypertension before it develops to be hypertension as a precautionary measure. Thus, such measures shall help to prevent hypertension, thereby improving the overall wellbeing of individuals and families.

COVID-19 induced economic loss and ensuring food security for vulnerable groups: Policy implications from Bangladesh.

At present nearly half of the world's population is under some form of government restriction to curb the spread of COVID-19, an extremely contagious disease. In Bangladesh, in the wake of five deaths and 48 infections from COVID-19, between March 24 and May 30, 2020, the government imposed a nationwide lockdown. While this lockdown restricted the spread of COVID-19, in the absence of effective support, it can generate severe food and nutrition insecurity for daily wage-based workers. Of the 61 million employed labor force in Bangladesh, nearly 35% of them are paid on a daily basis. This study examines the food security and welfare impacts of the COVID-19 induced lockdown on daily wage workers both in the farm and nonfarm sectors in Bangladesh. Using information from more than 50,000 respondents complied with the 2016-17 Household Income and Expenditure Survey (HIES) in Bangladesh, this study estimates daily wage rates as Bangladesh Taka (BDT) 272.2 in the farm sector and BDT 361.5 in the nonfarm sector. Using the estimated daily wage earnings, this study estimates that a one-day complete lockdown generates a US$64.2 million equivalent economic loss only considering the wage loss of the daily wage workers. After estimating the daily per capita food expenditure separately for farm and nonfarm households, this study estimates a minimum compensation package for the daily wage-based farm and nonfarm households around the US $ 1 per day per household to ensure minimum food security for the daily wage-based worker households.