Definition
MAFEDCHEESE24H (V414P) indicates whether the child's mother gave her youngest surviving child cheese during the previous day, either at night or during the daytime. This variable describes a characteristic of the mother rather than the child.
The related variable MAFEDYOGURT24H (V414V) indicates whether the child's mother gave her youngest surviving child yogurt during the previous day. Because FEDCHEESE24H may include children who ate either cheese or yogurt, users may want to combine responses to MAFEDYOGURT24H and MAFEDCHEESE24H to maximize comparability.
Although the question wording asks about foods given to a specific child during the previous day, responses relate to the mother, so all young children of the mother are coded the same way. If the mother reported she gave her youngest surviving child cheese in the previous day, all of her young children in the data are coded as "yes," including any children who have died or who live elsewhere.
A positive response in MAFEDCHEESE24H thus does not necessarily indicate whether a particular child of the mother ate cheese during the previous day. IPUMS-DHS users should instead employ the variable FEDCHEESE24H (M37X) to determine whether the child ate cheese during the previous day. See Comparability.
The related variable MAFEDCHEESE24HX reports the number of times the child's mother gave her youngest surviving child cheese during the previous 24 hours. MAFEDCHEESEWKD (V470X) reports the number of days the child's mother gave her youngest surviving child cheese during the past week.
