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Resource centre on India's rural distress
 
 

Little or no association between economic growth and child nutrition

It seems that a long-drawn-out battle among economists about economic growth trickling down into development has found some solid answer. A recent paper published in the Lancet Global Health journal (April, 2014), which has been jointly written by a team of experts based on evidence from 121 Demographic and Health Surveys from 36 low-income and middle-income countries shows that there exists little or no association between increases in per capita GDP* and reductions in early childhood nutrition** (measured in terms of stunting, underweight, and wasting). (Please see the links below).

Traditionally, economists believe that rise in economic growth leads to gains in average income, especially improving the incomes of poor people, which in turn improves access to, and consumption of, goods and services that betters nutritional status and health. By using logistic regression models, the study done by experts from Harvard School of Public Health, University of Göttingen, Germany, ETH Zürich, Switzerland, and the Indian Institute of Technology-Gandhinagar finds that at the country level, no association was observed between average changes in the prevalence of child undernutrition outcomes and average growth of per-head GDP@. No association was discovered between per-head GDP and undernutrition in young children from the poorest household wealth quintile either#.

Sebastian Vollmer and colleagues in their study conclude that there is a need to focus on direct investments in health and nutrition, and not to rely exclusively on the so-called trickle-down approach of a growth-mediated strategy for improving nutritional status of children.

The study, which uses the largest available, nationally representative, and mutually comparable repeated cross-sectional samples from 121 surveys in 36 low-income to middle-income countries, has provided several reasons behind the weak or null association between increases in per capita GDP and reductions in early childhood nutrition. They are: 1) Growth in incomes could be unequally distributed without improving the prosperity and, thus, nutritional status of poor; 2) Rise in incomes is not spent on enhancing the nutritional status of children; and 3) Increase in  average incomes could be poorly associated with improvements to public services that are essential to improve the nutritional status of the population (e.g., vaccinations against diseases that can precipitate and maintain undernutrition, prenatal and postnatal care, clean water and sanitation, etc).

A similar conclusion has been reached by the study entitled Social Progress Index 2014, which came from the US-based non-profit group Social Progress Imperative@#. The Social Progress Index, which is a brainchild of Michael E Porter, the eminent Harvard business professor and a Republican, says that India being a fast-growing economy, currently underperforms on social progress relative to its GDP per capita. After comparing 132 countries, it has been found that India is 94th on GDP and 102nd on social progress, thereby depicting that it has failed to translate economic growth into well-being of the average citizen. The country has particularly low scores on Shelter (39.77) in the Basic Human Needs dimension and Tolerance and Inclusion (21.54) in the Opportunity dimension. However, in an economy with increased penetration of mobile telephony, one is puzzled to find Access to Information and Communication (39.87) being red-flagged in the Foundations of Wellbeing dimension.

Note:

* National aggregate data for per-head GDP taken from the Penn World Tables 8.0

** Data on child nutrition taken from Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) done by ICF International

@ In models adjusted only for country and survey-year fixed effects, a 5% increase in per head GDP was associated with an odds ratio (OR) of 0·993 (95% CI 0·989–0·995) for stunting, 0·986 (0·982–0·990) for underweight, and 0·984 (0·981–0·986) for wasting. ORs after adjustment for the full set of covariates were 0·996 (0·993–1·000) for stunting, 0·989 (0·985–0·992) for underweight, and 0·983 (0·979–0·986) for wasting.

# ORs for the poorest wealth quintile were 0·997 (0·990–1·004) for stunting, 0·999 (0·991–1·008) for underweight, and 0·991 (0·978–1·004) for wasting.

@# The Social Progress Index is the sum of three dimensions: a. Basic Human Needs, b. Foundations of Wellbeing, and c. Opportunity. Each dimension is made up of four equally weighted individual components scored on an objective scale from 0-100. This scale is determined by identifying the best and worst global performance on each indicator by any country in the last 10 years, and using these to set the maximum (100) and minimum (0) bounds. Thus Social Progress Index scores are realistic benchmarks rather than abstract measures. The scaling allows one to track absolute, not just relative, country performance.

References:

Association between economic growth and early childhood undernutrition: evidence from 121 Demographic and Health Surveys from 36 low-income and middle-income countries (2014)-Sebastian Vollmer, Kenneth Harttgen, Malavika A Subramanyam, Jocelyn Finlay, Stephan Klasen, SV Subramanian, Lancet Glob Health, e225–34, Vol 2, April (click here to download)

Why are economic growth and reductions in child undernutri
tion so weakly correlated—and what can public policy do? (2014)-Abhijeet Singh, The Lancet Global Health,  Volume 2, Issue 4, Pages e185 - e186, April

Economic growth has done little to reduce child under-nutrition -Vani Manocha, Down to Earth, 27 March, 2014, http://www.im4change.org/latest-news-updates/economic-grow
th-has-done-little-to-reduce-child-under-nutrition-vani-ma
nocha-24619.html
 
 
 
Conference on Agriculture and Food Security held at Institute of Economic Growth, University of Delhi, 21 March, 2014, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f5qD9a8Weso  

We’re Not No. 1! We’re Not No. 1!-Nicholas Kristof, The New York Times, 2 April, 2014, http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/03/opinion/were-not-no-1-we
re-not-no-1.html
 
Image Courtesy: Millennium Development Goals: India Country Report 2014, MoSPI,
http://www.im4change.org/docs/242mdg_2014.pdf