Gender differences in nutritional status among the adult Meiteis of Cachar district of Assam, India

Abstract

The present paper intends to study the gender differences in nutritional status with reference to age, education and family income. The data have been collected by household census method and nutritional anthropometry among 264 adult Meiteis (123 males, and 141 females) of 20 to 79 years age of Cachar District of Assam, India. The study reveals that more than 30 percentage of the populations are suffering from chronic energy deficiency (CED) malnutrition (males=27.6%, females=33.3%) while more than 7 percentage of the adults are battling with over-nutrition (males=8.1%, females=6.4%). Chi-square test doesn’t show any significant (P=0.356) difference in nutritional status between males and females. Although slight positive association exists between body mass index (BMI) and age (rxy=0.056) but BMI of the adult Meiteis show significant positive association with year of schooling (rxy=0.143, P<0.05) and annual family income (rxy=0.215, P<0.01).

Keywords

• Adult,sex,age group,educational status,income category

References

1. Askovic B, Kirchengast S. (2012) Gender differences in nutritional behavior and weight status during early and late adolescence. Anthropol Anz 69:289-304.