Household caregiving environment. Two dimensions of the caregiving environment were considered: maternal decision- making autonomy and the presence of grandparents in the household. Mother’s decision-making autonomy was calculated from a women’s responses to a series of eight questions regarding her decision-making ability, such as whether she has the ability to decide what to cook on a daily basis, to purchase expensive item, the number of children you have, what to do when she falls sick, whether to buy land/property, wedding expenses, what to do if a child falls sick, and whom your children should marry. Decision-making scores were calculated as the sum of the number of questions to which a woman provided a positive response; women were categorized as having high decision-making autonomy if her score was five or above and low decision-making autonomy otherwise. Presence of grandparents in the household was determined from the woman’s questionnaire. Two aspects of presence of grandparents in the household were considered: (1) as co-resident(s) of the household and (2) as household head. Having grandparents in the household, or grandparents as co-residents, was defined as a child’s mother reporting that at least one of her parents or her parents-in-law resided in the same household as her. Using this information, a four-level grandparent variable was created for no grandparent(s) in the household, only maternal grandparent(s) (i.e., with no paternal grandparents) living in the household, only paternal grandparent(s) (i.e., with no maternal grandparents) living in the household, or both maternal and paternal grandparent(s) living in the household. Maternal grandparents were grouped together, as were paternal grandparents, since they yielded similar results when each of maternal and paternal grandfathers and grandmothers were examined separately in relate to child height-for-age z-score. Grandparents as head of the household was also considered therefore, we also created a three-level indicator of whether the father, a grandparent, or other family member (including mother) was head of household for analysis.
