Table 1 List of variables used in the analysis

Household food insecurity (HFI)

A nine-item HFI scale was used to assess household food insecurity. In the past 12 months: (1) how frequently did you worry that your household would not have enough food? (2) how often were you or any household member not able to eat the kinds of foods you preferred because of a lack of resources? (3) how often did you or any household member have to eat a limited variety of foods due to a lack of resources? (4) how often did you or any household member have to eat some foods that you really did not want to eat because of a lack of resources to obtain other types of food? (5) how often did you or any household member have to eat a smaller meal than you felt you needed you felt you needed because there was not enough food? (6) how often did you or any household member eat fewer meals in a day because of lack of resources to get food? (7) how often was there with no food to eat of any kind in your household because of lack of resources to get food? (8) how often did you or any household member go to sleep at night hungry because there was not enough food? And (9) how often did you or any household member go a whole day and night without eating anything because there was not enough food? Answer categories for each item included never (0), rarely (1), sometimes (2), and often (3). A summated HFI scale ranged from 0 to 27. Respondents who answered “never” to all nine questions and maintained a zero summated scale score were coded as 0; those who scored 1 to 27 were coded as 1.

Ethnicity

Ethnicity had 11 categories. We recoded them into 7 meaningful dummy variables: Brahmin/Chhetri, Newar, Hill Indigenous, Terai Indigenous, Muslim, Dalit, and Other castes. In logistic regressions, Dalit served as the reference category.

Sex of the household head

If the head of the household was a female it was coded as 1; else = 0

Total household members

A continuous variable representing total household members living in the same household.

Age at interview

A continuous variable representing women’s age.

Women’s education

Education included four dummy variables: no education, primary education (pre-primary to the completion of 5th grade of schooling), secondary education (6th grade to the completion of 10th grade); and High School and above (beyond 10th grade). No education served as the reference category in regression.

Women’s marital status

Women who were married or living with partner were recoded as 1; all others including never in union, widowed, divorced or not living together were coded as 0.

Had birth(s) in the last 5 years

Women who had given at least one birth in the last five years were coded as 1 and those who had not given any birth during the same time were coded as 0.

Wealth index

NDHS has a five-level (1–5) wealth quantiles index (poorest, poorer, middle, richer & richest) variable by assigning each household the scores derived using principal component analysis based on the ownership of a wide range of goods (e.g., television, bicycle, car, housing characteristics such as source of drinking water, toilet facilities, and flooring materials). We used this variable as continuous.

Property ownership

If women owned a house or land they were coded as 1; else = 0

Employment/Work

If women worked aside from their house work, they were coded 1; else = 0.

Religion

Hindu women were coded as 1; else they were coded as 0.

Residence

Urban residence = 1; rural =0

Ecological zone

Based on the terrain, NDHS has divided Nepal into three regions: Mountain region of the north, middle hills, and Terai in the south. We dummy coded them into three variables. In logistic regression, Terai served as the reference group.

Development Region

Development region included 5 dummy coded administrative regions: Eastern (reference group), Central, Western, Midwestern and Far-western regions.