Background: Bangladesh is undergoing a nutrition transition associated with rapid social and economic transitions giving rise to the double burden of malnutrition phenomenon. Some studies have been done on the double burden of malnutrition with Bangladeshi women, children, and mother-children pairs. It is essential to investigate under-nutrition among mother-under-five children pairs of the same household in Bangladesh. The objective of this study was to determine the prevalence and associated factors of under-nutrition among mother-under-five children pairs at the same household in Bangladesh.

Methods: We extracted data from the last data set of Bangladesh Health and Demographic Survey, 2014 (BDHS, 2014). BDHS, 2014 collected data from married women of reproductive age from different levels of Bangladesh. The sample of this study consisted of 7,368 married, currently non-pregnant Bangladeshi women with their under-five children. Two-level binary logistic regression model was used in this study for getting the risk factors of under-nutrition among mother-child pairs in Bangladesh.

Results: We observed that the prevalence of under-nourished mother-child pairs in Bangladesh was 22.0%. The two-level binary logistic model determined five risk factors of under-nutrition among mother-under-five child pairs: (i) living location (division), (ii) type of residence, (iii) parental education, (iv) household wealth quintile, (v) children birth weight.

Conclusions: Our selected model determined the risk factors of under-nutrition among mother-under-five child pairs in Bangladesh. The government and non-government authorities can consider our findings for reducing the number of under-nutrition among mother-children pairs at the same households in Bangladesh for achieving health-related goals under SDGs by 2030.