Family Size and Nutritional Outcomes in Children: Lessons from Pakistan

Deteriorating child health impacts socioeconomic outcomes and is a critical concern. This study explores how the child nutrition is affected by the family size in Pakistan, utilising data of 4031 individuals from the Demographic Health Survey of Pakistan 2017-18. The indicators like height for age S score, weight for height S score, and weight for age S score are used to estimate child nutrition. To address endogeneity, instrumental variable approach is employed, and the family size is instrumented by gender of the first child (girl). The results show that if there is an increase in the family size the HAS score lowers by 0.19 SD and the probability of stunting increases by 4.2 percent while no significant impact is observed on WHS and WAS. However, if family size increases, it is also associated with a 3.1 percent increase in the child’s likelihood of being underweight. Hence, an increase in family size will have a long-term detrimental effect on children’s nutritional status.