Determinants of child stunting in 13 high malnutrition-affected countries: The role of maternal education and clean household cooking fuel

Child stunting, which is one of the basic indicators of child malnutrition, is an important barrier to creating human capital in underdeveloped and developing countries. This study aims to find how different social, environmental, and health-related structural factors contribute to child stunting. Especially, how female education and clean fuel use can have an impact on childhood stunting in malnutrition-burdened countries. To do so, this study collects data from the world's 13 high malnutrition-affected countries from 2000 to 2022. This study used Driscoll-Kraay's (DK) standard errors, GMM and fixed-effect models for its analysis to address the problems of cross-sectional dependence, endogeneity, and slope heterogeneity of collected data. The analysis demonstrates that higher female education, clean fuel use, and sanitary facilities are associated with reduced stunting. The empirical results show that maternal education significantly affects the prevalence of stunting: For each unit increase in maternal education, the prevalence of stunting decreases by 0.46 units (β = −0.4605). Likewise, increased access to clean cooking fuels has a strong negative association with stunting (β = −3.1807), underscoring the need to achieve better household environmental quality to improve child nutrition. On the other hand, higher urbanization is linked to higher child stunting. However, the role of immunization is insignificant in child stunting. The study suggests that countries should promote female education, the use of clean household fuel, and basic sanitation facilities and must undergo planned urbanization. Contributions of the study include providing long-run data through a multi-country panel perspective and looking at social, environmental, and health determinants of stunting simultaneously in some of the most malnutrition-burdened countries in the world.