Household composition and child health in Botswana

There is a general lack of research on child health outcomes such as stunting and diarrhoea prevalence and its relationship with household composition in low and middle-income countries (LMICs). Most of the research on family and household influences on child health comes from the United States of America (USA), the United Kingdom and other higher-income countries. This analysis aims to find out whether child health, as measured by stunting and diarrhoea prevalence among children less than 5 years of age in Botswana, is associated with the composition of the household. These two child health conditions have been chosen to represent both long-term and short-term health implications. Stunting develops over a long period, indicating a lack of sufficient nutrition. It is defined as low height for the child’s age [1, 2]. Conversely, diarrhoea is a short-term indicator of poor health and is related to poor environmental conditions [3].

The two-child health outcomes investigated in this manuscript represent significant health problems for children throughout LMICs. UNICEF [4] shows that stunting contributes to more than a third of deaths among children less than 5 years of age, and its prevalence is highest in sub-Saharan Africa (40.0% of the world’s cases) and South Asia (39.0% of stunted children in the world). The same report also states that diarrhoeal diseases remain a leading killer of young children contributing to 1% of world’s deaths during the neonatal period and to 10% of the deaths in the post-neonatal period [4]. Recent estimates also show that together stunting and diarrhoeal disease-account for almost half of the world’s child deaths [5].

Stunting and diarrhoea are also widespread among children in Botswana. According to official data, 26% of children under 5 years were stunted in 1993. The corresponding figure for 2000 was 23% [6, 7]. By 2007, the level of stunting among children had increased to 29.9% [8]. Data on diarrhoea in Botswana shows that its prevalence was about 20% among children under 5 years in 2004 [9].

The prevalence of stunting and diarrhoea is related to a broad range of factors. The causes of stunting include poor household food security, inadequate care, poor access to health services and unequal distribution in socio-economic resources [10‐12]. Poor socio-economic conditions, poor breastfeeding practice, and increased risks of persistent illness are associated with diarrhoea prevalence [13].

Another important factor for child health outcomes is the role played by the child’s family and household members. For example, past studies of family structure in high-income countries (HICs) highlight the importance of parental time, economic and social resources for child well-being [14, 15], and familial stability [16] on health. Other studies show that households provide a physical place that supports childrearing, procreation, consumption and economic production [17‐19]. Families and homes also provide resources to identify and manage child health [20, 21].

While most of the studies conducted on family and child well-being in HICs provide a good starting point for understanding the role of the family and household environment on child well-being, it remains critical to explore the role of households on child health in the LMIC context. Household environments in LMICs can be very different from those that are standard in HICs, with associated differences in the context of child-rearing, which might result in differing results between HICs and LMICs contexts. For example, in HICs, the focus has tended to be on the influence of one- or two-parent families, with less consideration of the other adults in the household [22], which may be necessary for LMICs.

Research in LMICs indicates that households are larger and more complex than those in HICs concerning membership. Children in LMICs are raised in homes with higher levels of non-parental residence, and with a higher proportion of other household members [23‐26] outside of the traditional nuclear family. In the case of Southern Africa, children are likely to live in multi-generational households and along with grandparents [27], as well as live apart from their mothers [26].

Moreover, research to date has not fully explored household relationships from the view of the child; that is by establishing their relationship to everyone else in the household from their perspective. Earlier work has defined household composition as relationships of household members only to the household head [28‐30], or kin [31, 32]. However, this approach is limited since it does not show the relationship of each member to the rest of the household members. Additionally, this traditional perspective of household membership is problematic when focusing on children when the relation of the child to the broader household membership is of interest and not only the relationship between the children to the head of the household. Thus, the current analysis constitutes a first step in using more expanded categories of the household composition to understand its impact on child health.

The purpose of this study is to examine the types of household composition as operationalised from the relationship of the child to other household members. It will then extend this to assess if child health outcomes vary by the household composition. The main focus will be on whether the child lives with both parents, only one parent, or no parents at all, as well as the types of other individuals living in the household (such as grandparents, aunts, uncles, other relatives or unrelated household members). Lastly, the study examines the extent to which different types of household members moderate the relationship between living with parent(s) and child health outcomes.

The analysis uses data from a nationally representative survey, the 2007 Botswana Family Health Survey (BFHS). The 2007 BFHS contains information on maternal and child health outcomes as well as data on the demographics, family background and household living conditions for children aged less than 5 years. The sampling design for the 2007 BFHS involved two stages. The first stage of sampling involved a selection of enumeration areas (EAs) proportional to the number of households in the EA. The second stage of sampling involved a systematic selection of 7841 occupied households from the selected EAs [8]. Within the sampled households, all the 5021 eligible women aged 15–49 were interviewed, and detailed information about their households and all their children aged less than 5 years were collected [8].

The 2007 BFHS data has a hierarchical structure in which 2531 children are nested within 1804 households and 298 enumeration areas for stunting prevalence. For diarrhoea prevalence, 2713 children are nested in 1892 households and within 298 EAs. The data consists of 2531 children for stunting, excluding 184 children who had missing data on the age variable and height for age z scores (HAZ) and had implausible values outside the range − 6/+ 6 HAZ. For diarrhoea prevalence, the count is 2713 children as only two children had missing data on the outcome.

This manuscript examined household composition and child health using BFHS 2007 data. The descriptive results show that the range of actors involved in child-rearing in Botswana is extensive and much broader than biological parents. It includes grandparents, aunts, uncles, other relatives, and persons not related to the child. This finding is consistent with the results of an examination of children living arrangements in 19 developing countries, which have found that children in this context live in more extensive and diverse households than in high-income countries [26].

Several studies show that there are benefits for living in extended households for children. Evidence from the USA suggests that living with extended family for single parents provides opportunities for childcare and a safety net if the parent cannot afford childcare alone [45]. Similarly, studies in the developing countries show that living with extended household members enables access to socio-economic resources provided by adult household members such as grandparents and aunts [46‐48]. Evidence also indicates that extended households offer opportunities to pooling of socio-economic resources to assist with child monitoring and supervision [23, 49]. However, larger households in developing countries also present competing demands for resources, which disadvantage children about insufficient food, inadequate attention and deficient health care [28].

The results from the multivariate analysis indicate that whether the child lives with none, one or two parents, as well as whom the parent lives with, it matters for stunting and diarrhoea prevalence. In particular, for stunting, living with neither parent increases the odds of stunting, compared to living with both parents. Also, the results show that stunting is more prevalent among children living with unrelated household members, and it is less among those children living with an aunt. The protective association of living with relatives on the risk of stunting suggests that kin may care more about the child than unrelated household members. A review of living arrangements of children from 19 developing countries shows that there is more commitment to childcare and provision of financial resources among children in households with parents and other related adults [26]. Research by Bronte-Tinkew and DeJong in Jamaica report that living with biological parents offer more care and provision of food resources that prevent child malnutrition [23].

Besides food resources and parental care, variation in access to health care is linked to the differences in child nutritional status. A study on child feeding practices and access to health services in Sierra Leone found household discrimination in food allocation and access to medical care toward foster children [50]. Furthermore evidence in Guinea-Bissau indicate that motherless children are often more malnourished than those living with their mothers, as they are placed in smaller and grandparent’s households, which are more likely to take a traditional approach to health care [51].

The findings from our study also confirm the results of other studies showing that household wealth, child’s age and sex are associated with stunting. About household wealth, the results show that those who are more affluent, regardless of who is in the household, do better in stunting and diarrhoea prevalence than those who are poorer. Other studies show that low household wealth is associated with increased risks for stunting [42], and higher rates of diarrhoea in infancy [43] from a lack of resources to ensure proper nutrition and good hygienic practices [23]. It may also be that richer in contrast to poorer households can offer opportunities for economic and social influences that promote and maintain good health [20, 21, 52].

Due to sex, male children in Botswana remain at a higher risk of stunting compared to females. This finding is as expected and consistent with prior research which indicates that stunting is more prevalent among male than female children [11, 23, 53, 54]. Since Batswana do not hold rigid notions and preference of children by sex, this finding is probably for biological and behavioural reasons. A longitudinal study of child development in Quebec by Côté, Blanchard [55] found that males are more prone to low birth weight, which is affected by maternal nutrition and health behaviours during pregnancy. Therefore, the finding on male vulnerability to stunting in Botswana necessitates continued care and careful monitoring of males in infancy and childhood.

By age, the findings in Botswana indicate that stunting is highest at 12–23 months. This result is not surprising given that the effect of stunting is long-term, cumulative, and more pronounced at 12–23 months [56, 57]. Some previous research finds that the lack of care and nourishment during early childhood is associated with higher risks of stunting among children aged between 6 and 23 months [58]. These findings suggest that household factors such as wealth and environmental condition are possible exogenous factors associated with low nutritional status. Accordingly, future research would benefit from considering these factors.

Our study also found that only one interaction between parental presence and grandparent presence showed a modifying effect on the relationship for stunting. The results showed that children who live with a mother and grandparent were slightly more stunted compared to those living with both parents. This finding is likely due to the strained coping capability of mother-only households to provide economic and food resources that are needed to prevent stunting. As reflected in other studies, mother-only families are much more likely to be poorer and not able to provide food and material needed for healthy child growth [14, 59], compared to living with both parents [29, 60].

A study by Mokomane, Baker [61] in rural and urban settings in Botswana shows that most of the single mothers who co-resided with their mothers were not employed. Thus, for mother-only households, co-residing with a grandmother may imply a lack of economic resources to maintain one’s household. On the other hand, two-parent households where grandparents co-reside may have enough financial resources to ensure proper child nutrition and care of extra members. Other studies suggest that co-residence with grandparents implies care of the grandparent [62, 63] and grandchildren [48].

Concerning diarrhoea prevalence in Botswana, the findings indicate that children living only with a mother and those living with neither parent are less likely to have diarrhoea compared to those living with both parents. This finding is contrary to expectation since it is often assumed that living with both parents is beneficial for child well-being compared with living with a single parent [15, 16, 64, 65].

The comparison of living with neither parent and living with both parents on diarrhoea prevalence may reflect the transitory movement of children with no parents into households that can provide for them. For example, a study on the orphanage and nutritional status of Luo children in Kenya indicates that orphans often end up in wealthier households than non-orphans [66]. Evidence from Botswana also shows that working or income-earning households are often the preferred choice for providing the basic needs of orphaned children in the short-term [67]. However, the cross-sectional nature of the data used in the study by Miller, Gruskin [67] and Zidron, Juma [66] do not allow an analysis of financial resources of the parent (s) and the nature and timing of fostering of children by extended family members on child health outcomes. This information would aid in interpreting the effects of no parents household on both long-term illnesses (stunting) and on the short-term disease (diarrhoea).

Finally, the results on clustering indicate that most of the variance in stunting and diarrhoea prevalence is attributed to differences between households than to enumeration areas. Thus, this finding echoes other studies, which show that households are shared contexts, and children within the same household are likely to have similar risks of time, social and economic resources for child nutritional status [68‐71], as well as the use of health services [72, 73]. On the other hand, the small clustering effect at the EA level may imply the little impact of the geographical contextual effect on the two-child health outcomes. Also, a small clustering effect at the EA level may merely be an indication of the presence of other real EA effects which are not accounted for in the present analysis.

The results from this study provide a basis for enhanced efforts to improve child health across households in Botswana. The findings show that stunting is higher among children living with no parents compared to those living with both parents. Stunting is also high among children living with unrelated household members. Also, children living in mother-only households and with a grandparent present have a higher level of stunting compared to those living with both parents. Further, the results on long term illness indicate that living with an aunt and living with other relatives protects against stunting.

The analysis of diarrhoea prevalence indicates that the presence of a mother and the absence of both parents are more critical for reducing this short-term illness. However, it is not clear if this is the case in the long term. Across all households, the results on stunting and diarrhoea prevalence show that children living in a wealthy household are much more likely to be healthier than those living in a poor household. Moreover, the results indicate variability in child health outcomes across households. The findings show a clustering effect at the household level at 17.1% for stunting and 21.1% for diarrhoea prevalence.

Finally, the research demonstrates a nuanced way of investigating household relationships from a child’s view, rather than establishing household relationships from the look of the household head as in previous research. This approach constitutes the first step in using more expanded categories of household’s relationships to understand child health by using more information about the household members such as age, sex, marital status and parental links in establishing their relationship with the reference child.

About policy implication, the analysis underscores the importance of interventions that target household level and other adults in a household besides biological parents. Further, programs should take into account the nature of the child’s health condition, whether it is long-term illness or short-term illness. Also, for health programs to reduce stunting and diarrhoea prevalence, they need to take into account the level of household socio-economic resources.