Social and household factors afecting child health checkup attendance based on a household survey in Japan

Child health checkups are an important public service to support children’s development; however, many children do not attend all the child health checkups that are required by maternal and child health law (i.e., at 1 month, 4 months, 1 and a half years, and 3 years of age). This study aimed to identify social and household factors inluencing child health checkup attendance. We used data from a longitudinal household panel study in Japan. The total number of subjects was 2, 612 children. We extracted numerous social variables relecting childcare and conducted logistic regression analyses. In every health checkup, the attendance rate was signiicantly lower for children whose birth order was 3^rd or later. Children whose father graduated from a 4-year college or whose mother had 5 or more communicating neighbors were signiicantly more likely to attend the 1-and-a-half-year checkup. Children whose maternal annual income was in the middle range (1.5 to 5.0 million yen) tended not to attend checkups after 1 and a half years of age. We concluded that the later birth order was the factor of non-attendance. On the other hand, high paternal educational attainment and many communicating neighbors were identiied as the factors of attendance.