DOES DIETARY DIVERSITY IMPROVE NUTRITIONAL OUTCOMES? EVIDENCE FROM NATIONAL PANEL DATA OF FARM HOUSEHOLDS IN BANGLADESH

While dietary diversity (DD) is an essential indicator of nutrition, studies have been undertaken for assessing its status, and drivers have used smaller sample sizes, which make it difficult to draw firm conclusions, especially for deriving policy intervention. Keeping this in mind, the study attempts to estimate the effect of dietary diversity on nutritional status in Bangladesh. Three rounds of Bangladesh Integrated Household Survey (BIHS) data collected in 2011/12, 2015, and 2018/19 by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) were used in this study. The total sample size was 10,068, out of which 3,356 were from each survey round. Panel data regression models using fixed-effect and random-effect models were used to examine the effect of dietary diversity on nutritional status. The Hausman test was used to find the best model. The result shows a notable positive change in dietary diversity from the baseline survey to the end line. The average DD was 0.764 in 2011-12, 0.79 in 2015, and 0.81 in 2018-19. Dietary diversity was positively significantly associated with per capita calories and protein. This implies that if the DD of a household were increased by 1 unit, its per capita calorie intake would be increased by 0.46% with other things remaining constant. Farm production diversity and off-farm income were also positively associated with nutritional intake. As dietary diversity is the key to improved nutrition from a policy standpoint, it is critical to concentrate interventions on promoting dietary diversity and nutrition security along with agricultural diversity while considering the socio-economic context of the target area and its population.