Corrigendum to "Do maternal socioeconomic status influence child overweight? [10(2) 30 January 2024 e24630].

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1016/j.heliyon.2024.e24630.].

Long-term effects of child nutritional status on the accumulation of health human capital.

Research on the impact of childhood nutrition on adult health and human capital has been extensively studied in developed countries, but research in China on this topic is limited. Nowadays, for children's nutritional status, while significant progress has been made in addressing childhood undernutrition in China, regional disparities persist, conversely, the prevalence of childhood overweight continues to rise. For adults' health human capital, the burden of chronic non-communicable diseases among Chinese residents is gradually increasing, over 50% of Chinese residents are overweight or obese, with obesity being one of the risk factors for other chronic diseases. Therefore, this study uses national representative data from 1991 to 2015 China Health and Nutrition Survey (CHNS), matched with individual information from their childhood, to examine the relationship between childhood nutrition and adult health human capital. Based on the two-way fixed effects models and logit models, the study finds that childhood nutrition status measured by height-for-age z score (HAZ) significantly and continuously has been influencing adult health human capital measured by height, BMI, self-rated health (SRH), whether have been sick in last four weeks (SH). BMI-for-age z score (BMIZ) significantly and continuously influence adult health human capital measured by BMI, blood pressure, and perceived stress (PS). Among that, this study places special emphasis on the long-lasting effects of late childhood and adolescence (ages exceeding 6) on the progressive height accumulation and sustained presence of elevated blood pressure. In conclusion, reducing childhood overweight and promoting linear growth and development throughout the whole childhood can reduce the future burden of disease on the nation.

Social determinants of stunting in Malay children aged <5 years in Malaysia.

OBJECTIVE: This study aims to assess social determinants of stunting among children aged <5 y within the Malay ethnicity in Malaysia. METHODS: This study used data from the National Health and Morbidity Survey 2016: Maternal and Child Health. It includes a sample of 10 686 children, ages 0 to 59 mo, of Malay ethnicity. Height-for-age z score was determined based on the World Health Organization Anthro software. A binary logistic regression model was used to examine the association between the selected social determinants and the occurrence of stunting. RESULTS: About 22.5% of children aged <5 y of Malay ethnicity were stunted. For those ages 0 to 23 mo, stunting is more prevalent in boys, in rural areas, and in those who have screen exposure, whereas a reduction of stunting was observed for those children whose mothers work in the private sector and in those who consume formula milk and meat. As for those ages 24 to 59 mo, there was a higher prevalence of stunting for those with self-employed mothers and reduced prevalence in children with hygienic waste disposal practices as well as those who play with toys. CONCLUSIONS: The prevalence of stunting among children of Malay ethnicity aged <5 in Malaysia necessitates immediate intervention. It is pertinent to facilitate early identification of those children at risk of stunting for additional care to promote healthy growth.

The Impact of Public, Private, and Out-of-Pocket Health Expenditures on Under-Five Mortality in Malaysia.

Health financing in Malaysia is intensely subsidised by public funding and is increasingly sourced by household out-of-pocket financing, yet the under-five mortality rate has been gradually increasing in the last decade. In this context, this study aims to investigate the relationship between public, private, and out-of-pocket health expenditures and the under-five mortality rate in Malaysia using the autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) estimation technique, whereby critical test values are recalculated using the response surface method for a time-series data of 22 years. The findings reveal that out-of-pocket health expenditure deteriorates the under-five mortality rate in Malaysia, while public and private health expenditures are statistically insignificant. Therefore, an effective health financing safety net may be an option to ensure an imperative child health outcome.

How relevant is environmental quality to per capita health expenditures? Empirical evidence from panel of developing countries.

BACKGROUND: Developing countries have witnessed economic growth as their GDP keeps increasing steadily over the years. The growth led to higher energy consumption which eventually leads to increase in air pollutions that pose a danger to human health. People's healthcare demand, in turn, increase due to the changes in the socioeconomic life and improvement in the health technology. This study is an attempt to investigate the impact of environmental quality on per capital health expenditure in 125 developing countries within a panel cointegration framework from 1995 to 2012. RESULTS: We found out that a long-run relationship exists between per capita health expenditure and all explanatory variables as they were panel cointegrated. The explanatory variables were found to be statistically significant in explaining the per capita health expenditure. The result further revealed that CO2 has the highest explanatory power on the per capita health expenditure. The impact of the explanatory power of the variables is greater in the long-run compared to the short-run. Based on this result, we conclude that environmental quality is a powerful determinant of health expenditure in developing countries. CONCLUSION: Therefore, developing countries should as a matter of health care policy give provision of healthy air a priority via effective policy implementation on environmental management and control measures to lessen the pressure on health care expenditure. Moreover more environmental proxies with alternative methods should be considered in the future research.