- Authors: Dean Spears, Diane Coffey, Angus Deaton, Jean Drèze, Alessandro Tarozzi
- Published in: Economic & Political Weekly
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Abstract
Indian children are very short, on average, compared with children living in other countries. There are passing mentions of health and medical care, but healthcare is much less important for health status than the toll on children’s growth that comes from constant struggling with disease. Because height reflects early life health and net nutrition, and because good early life health also helps brains to grow and capabilities to develop, widespread growth faltering is a human development disaster. Enteric or intestinal infection, by contrast, is a disease that is likely to have a greater effect on height than on mortality. Open defecation is widespread in India and population density is very high, meaning that open defecation often happens near where children live. Children who grow up in high population density environments without sanitation are exposed to more fecal pathogens than children who do not. The status of women in India relative to sub-Saharan Africa may also play a role in the relative heights of their children.