In Rwanda stunting has decreased remarkably in the past decade. But the changes haven’t been equal everywhere:

  • Nationally, 37% of children under 5 are stunted, meaning they have low height for their age.
  • But we can also look at something called the z-score, which is the number of standard deviations a child’s height is from normal children their age. There’s a range of z-scores in the children in Rwanda, ranging from those unusually short (stunted) for their age to those that are unusually tall.
  • Children with a z-score less than -2 standard deviations from the mean are classified as stunted, and children with a z-score less than -3 standard deviations are extremely stunted. [figure: single dot at 37%]

  • If we just look at the national average, though, or even a distribution of the national scores, we miss any variation across geography. Are children in Kigali City more or less likely to be stunted?

  • We can group the children into FEWS NET livelihood zones, which are geographic regions grouped by where households have similar livelihoods. From these distributions, though children in each have high or low z-scores, we begin to notice patterns. [figure: dot plot broken down by LZ]

  • Let’s look at this on a map. [choropleth of LZ – static]

  • In the Western half of the country, we can see that children in the Northwest Volcanic Irish Potato region and the West Congo-Nile Tea Crest seem to have lower z-scores &em; or higher levels of child malnutrition.

  • Conversely, in the urban areas of Kigali, children seem less likely to be stunted.

  • Geographic areas, are, after all, a little bit arbitrary. [interpolated map]

  • Why do these patterns exist? Are they the result of some intrinsic difference in the people who live there; for instance, are the people in the Northwest Volcanic Irish Potato region less wealthy, less educated, or have poorer diets? Or is there something more closely tied to that region that explains this phenomenon?

  • Using the household-level data from the Demographic and Health Surveys and the Comprehensive Food Security and Vulnerability Analysis, we ran regressions &em; statistical tests for whether there’s a relationship between stunting and various related factors.

  • What