Abstract:
This study aims to determine whether drinking, cooking, handwashing water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WaSH) are associated
with each of the three nutrition measures stunting, wasting and underweight jointly after adjusting for important covariates and
taking in to consideration the correlation within clusters, for the districts of Sri Lanka for children under 5 years. The data from
the Demographic and Health survey 2016 gives detailed information on WaSH variables, Nutrition variables and a number of
other probable prognostic factors. This data has been collected by the Department of Census and Statistics. The design of the
sample is a two stage cluster design with census blocks at the first stage and households at the second stage. Joint Generalized
Estimation Equation (GEE) estimation has been used within Generalized Linear models (GLM) for modeling the data.
Important conclusions are that when it comes to stunting and wasting tap water is better for cooking and handwashing. Good
sanitation improves stunting. Urban sector has less stunting than rural sector and this has less stunting than the estate sector.
Western province has lower odds of stunting. Wasting mainly depends on the proxy of wealth. Well water for drinking
improves underweight. Simple methods of living improve underweight
