Definition
For surviving children born in the three to five years before the survey, HWWTAPCT (HW7) reports the child's weight-for-age percentile, based on smoothed percentile growth charts by age and sex developed by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control.
Low child weight-for-age, or "underweight," is an indicator of chronic and/or acute malnutrition. The 5th percentile on growth charts has often been used as a screening cutoff to identify infants and children at greater nutritional and health risk.
HWWEIGHT (HW2) reports the child's weight as measured by DHS personnel. The related variable KIDAGEMO (HW1) reports the child's age in months at the time of measurement.
For an alternative measure of child wasting in terms of weight-for-age using the same reference population, see HWWAZNCHS (HW8). HWWAZNCHS reports the difference between the child's weight and the median weight of the CDC reference population of the same age and sex, expressed in units equal to one standard deviation of the reference population's distribution.