Child Nutrition in India in the Nineties

In this paper we use data from two independent cross-sectional surveys (completed in 1992-93 and 1998-99) to evaluate to what extent the rapid rates of growth observed during the 1990s has been associated with a reduction in malnutrition among very young children (age 0 to 3). We find that measures of short-term nutritional status based on weight given height show large improvements, especially in urban areas. Height-for-age, an indicator of long-term nutritional status, also shows improvements, but limited to urban areas. However, we also document that nutritional status improved substantially more for boys than for girls. The gender differences in the changes over time appear to be driven by states in North India, where the existence of widespread son preference has been documented by an immense body of research