There’s no evidence that India’s growing prosperity has led to less malnutrition among Indian children, according to a new study by scientists from Harvard and the University of Michigan.
One plausible explanation, the authors wrote, is that India’s rapid economic growth “may have benefited only the privileged sections of society.”
Technology jobs have driven the boom, but 75 percent of the population is supported by farming or manufacturing, noted S. V. Subramanian, a geographer at the Harvard School of Public Health and an author of the study. To save the children of those families, India’s government may have to use its growing tax revenues for direct aid like food or food stamps, he said.
The study, published Tuesday in PLoS Medicine, looked at 77,326 children tracked in three national family health surveys conducted in 1992-93, 1998-99 and 2005-6. Among the data gathered in these huge household surveys were the heights, weights and ages of children.
The study broke down malnutrition by region. It was worst in the poorest and most crowded states like Bihar, Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh. It was less common in the remote mountainous northeastern states like Mizoram and Manipur, and also in Kerala, where the state government spends more on education and health. But there was little correlation between a state’s economic growth and how much food most children got.
Other studies have shown that educating women and reducing birth rates do more to keep children fed than macroeconomic growth, the authors said.
