Stunting, maternal investment, and early child development in Serbian Roma children aged 36-59 months

Abstract

Stunting has shown negative associations with poor child developmental indicators. However, in poor ethnic minority populations the evidence for associations of anthropometric growth indicators and child development is limited. This study examined associations between stunting, height for age z scores (HAZ) and other determinants, with Early Child Development (ECD) among children in poor Roma communities. Publicly available data from Multiple Indicator Cluster Surveys for Serbian Roma settlements were used to assess a cohort of 1075 Roma children aged 36-59 months. Indicators of child growth and nutrition included children?s HAZ scores and stunting. ECD assessed physical, learning/cognition, literacy/numeracy and socio-emotional developmental domains. Multiple regressions were used to assess the association between HAZ and stunting with ECD, controlling for maternal and child confounders. Sum score for ECD in Roma children was low, and 18% of children were stunted. After adjusting for potential confounders, HAZ and stunting revealed no significant associations with developmental outcomes. Instead, increasing maternal investment was positively associated with overall ECD score and higher scores in each of the individual developmental domains, except socio-emotional. In a low-resource setting, maternal investment appeared a good predictor of child development: it may buffer against the effects of poverty and stimulate child development.