Growth Matters? Revisiting the Enigma of Child Undernutrition in India

Manoj Panda, Abhishek Kumar and William Joe ()
Additional contact information
Manoj Panda: Delhi University Enclave (North Campus)
Abhishek Kumar: Delhi University Enclave (North Campus)
William Joe: Delhi University Enclave (North Campus)

A chapter in Practical Economic Analysis and Computation, 2024, pp 285-307 from Springer

Abstract: Abstract Higher economic growth in the post-liberalization phase since the 1990s was expected to translate into rapid all-around improvements in the well-being of the population. A notable exception, however, is apparent in the form of a persistently high level of child undernutrition in the face of rapid economic growth in India. We examine this discordance using different waves of National Family Health Survey (NFHS) data and find that economic growth has a more robust effect on child undernutrition during the period 2005–06 and 2015–16 than compared to earlier periods of 1992–93 and 2005–06. We argue that the quantum of growth is important for the effect to be felt on undernutrition, particularly on child stunting and underweight. We conclude that apart from relying on growth, direct investment in the health and nutrition sector should be an important priority for policymaking.

Keywords: Economic growth; Child undernutrition; Anthropometric failure; Asian enigma (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:isbchp:978-981-97-6753-3_13

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/9789819767533

DOI: 10.1007/978-981-97-6753-3_13

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in India Studies in Business and Economics from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().