Burden of Anemia Among Ever-married Women in Bangladesh: Does Household Economic Inequality Matter?

Despite significant advances in the field of medicine and healthcare, anemia continues to be a major public health problem worldwide. The situation is particularly acute in developing countries where females belonging to the reproductive age category are especially vulnerable to the malady. Given the multifactorial nature of this disease, correcting anemia often requires the adoption of an integrated approach. Therefore, it is imperative that the role played by the "causes of the causes" (i.e., the sociodemographic determinants of risk), along with other contributing factors, must be identified, and addressed in order to effectively combat this disease. In general, it is terrible to sort out the psychosocial factors from the demographics, environmental and poverty-related causes. Therefore, the objective of this study is to use a nationwide representative survey to explore the magnitude of household economic inequalities contribute towards the prevalence of anemia among ever-married women in Bangladesh. The study also aims to examine the inference of other explanatory variables that frequently had supposed decomposing on the burden of anemia. Thus, this study answers the questions: (a) what are the strengths and likelihoods of having mild, moderate or severe anemia among the ever married women of different SES?; (b) do other factors viz., demographics, diabetes, maternity, and BMI affects the strength and form of the association between SES and anemia?; (c) which explanatory variable is more prone to pose anemia among the women? As the burden of anemia is one of the key policy issues facing Bangladesh, the findings generated by this study are expected to contribute towards further policy making by virtue of identifying associated risk factors. This is expected to be instrumental for program purposes designed to prevent anemia among Bangladeshi women.