Intrahousehold food intake inequality by family roles and age groups

Food intake inequality at individual level is rarely analyzed in intrahousehold settings. We examine dietary diversity scores of household members with a focus on their family roles (fathers, mothers, sons, daughters and grandparents) and age groups (children, adults and elderly). Whereas theory suggests that members in a household should have equal dietary diversity by receiving a certain share of available foods, this research hypothesizes that they do not do so by their roles and/or age groups. We conduct questionnaire surveys, collecting sociodemographic information and dietary data using a 24-hour recall method of 3248 subjects in 811 households from one urban and two rural areas in Bangladesh. The statistical analysis demonstrates three findings. First, poor and rural people have lower dietary diversity than non-poor and urban people, respectively. Second, grandparents (children) have lower dietary diversity than do fathers (adults), confirming an existence of intrahousehold food intake inequality by the roles and/or age groups, irrespective of poverty level and areas of residence. Third, father and mother educations are crucial determinants to uniformly raise the standard of dietary diversity for their household, however, they do not resolve the inequality. Overall, it is suggested that awareness programs of dietary diversity shall be necessary with a target group of fathers and mothers for the betterment of intrahousehold inequality and health at household level, contributing to SDGs.