Child Feeding Practices and Its Association with Nutritional Status among Children in India: Revisiting Ruel’s Method in Indian Context

Mukesh Ravi Raushan, International Institute for Population Sciences (IIPS)
Ranjan Kumar Prusty, International Institute for Population Sciences (IIPS)
Shreeparna Ghosh, International Institute for Population Sciences (IIPS)

The present study tries to understand the role of child feeding practices on child nutrition using a composite child feeding index. An attempt has been made to create a composite index using Ruel and Menon’s method with some modification in Indian context using third round of National Family Health Survey (NFHS, 2005-06). Result shows wide diversity in feeding practices in India by region, economic status, sex of the child and maternal education. Bivariate results shows stunting is very high among children with poor feeding practices. The multinomial logistic regression shows HAZ score (height-for-age) is strongly associated with child feeding indices especially in the age group 6-9 months category of children. Other explanatory variables like mother’s education and wealth index has also a strong association with stunting status of children. Thus it is important to strengthen maternal education to improve feeding which simultaneously improves child nutrition.