Predictors of Inadequate Minimum Acceptable Diet among Infants and Young Children in Ethiopia: A Multilevel Logistic Regression Analysis

Muluhabet Alen Assefaw¹WONDAYA FENTA ZEWDIA^1*Bisratgebrial Tesfay Muche²Daniel Asmelash^2*

• ¹Department of Statistics, College of Science, Bahir Dar University, Bahirdar, Amhara Region, Ethiopia
• ²College of Medicine and Health Sciences, Mizan-Tepi University, Mizan-Aman, Ethiopia

Background: Inadequate minimum acceptable diet is the cause of poor physical and mental development and has a greater burden among infants and young children aged between 6 and 23 months. The main purpose of this study was to determine the factors of inadequate minimum acceptable diet among infants and young children in Ethiopian.The 2019 Ethiopian Mini demographic and health data survey dataset with 1,463 weighted samples of children aged 6-23 months was used. Data management was done using STATA version 17 software, SAS version 9.4 and multilevel analysis. To investigate the determinant factors, we applied multilevel statistical analysis.Results: Among 1,246 currently breastfed children aged 6-23 months, based on a 24hour recall method, it showed that 1,066 (85.56%), 550 (44.15%), 1,025(82.24%) and 1,098(88.09%) of children had inadequate Minimum Dietary Frequency, Minimum Meal Frequency, Minimum Milk Feeding Frequency and Minimum Acceptable Diet, respectively. The multilevel analysis revealed that individual level factors such as mothers with primary, secondary and higher educational level, middle and richest household wealth, children aged between 12-17 and 18-23 months, received a postnatal check, and having one and three antenatal care follow-up had lower odds of feeding their children with inadequate Minimum Acceptable Diet compared to their counterparts. However, women who were not married and had 6 or more number of family members had higher odds to feed their children with inadequate Minimum Acceptable Diet compared to married women and <=five numbers of family. At the zonal community level, children residing in urban areas and children residing in zonal communities with a high literacy level were less likely to have inadequate Minimum Acceptable Diet.There is a high magnitude of inadequate Minimum Acceptable Diet intake among children aged 6-23 months in Ethiopia. Mother's education, household wealth, marital status, number of families, age of child, postnatal check, community-level education, living in rural areas, and number of people under the age of 5 were significant factors of inadequate Minimum Acceptable Diet. The findings highlight that to increase the Minimum Acceptable Diet intake in Ethiopia, policymakers and other stakeholders need to give attention to enhancing household wealth and improving the accessibility of education.