Nutrition in India: Facts and Interpretations

80 Pages Posted: 20 May 2008

See all articles by Angus Deaton

Angus Deaton

Princeton University; National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER)

Jean Dreze

Ranchi University

Date Written: April 2008

Abstract

In spite of India's rapid economic growth, there has been a sustained decline in per capita calorie consumption during the last twenty-five years. While the decline has been largest among better-off households, it has taken place throughout the range of household per capita total expenditure. For both adults and children, anthropometric indicators of nutritional status in India are among the worst in the world. While these indicators have shown improvement over time, the rate of progress is slow relative to what might be expected based on international and historical experience. This paper presents the basic facts about growth, poverty and nutrition in India, it points to a number of puzzles, and it sketches a preliminary story that is consistent with the evidence. The reduction in calorie consumption cannot be attributed to declining real incomes, nor to any increase in the relative price of food. Our leading hypothesis, on which much work remains to be done, is that, as real incomes and wages have increased, leading to some nutritional improvement, there has been an offsetting reduction in calorie requirements due to declining levels of physical activity and possibly also to various improvements in the health environment. If correct, this analysis does not imply that Indians are currently adequately nourished; nothing could be further from the truth. Calorie intake has serious limitations as a nutritional intake; while calories are extremely important, there are too many sources of variation in calorie requirements for standard, invariant, calorie-norms to be usefully applied to large sections of the population. We conclude with a plea for better, and more regular, monitoring of nutritional status in India.

Keywords: nutrition, calories, poverty, growth, anthropometrics, health, India

JEL Classification: O12, O53, I12

Suggested Citation

Deaton, Angus S. and Dreze, Jean, Nutrition in India: Facts and Interpretations (April 2008). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1135253 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1135253

Angus S. Deaton (Contact Author)

Princeton University ( email )

Woodrow Wilson School
Princeton, NJ 08544
United States
609-258-5967 (Phone)
609-258-5974 (Fax)

HOME PAGE: http://www.wws.princeton.edu/~deaton

National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER)

1050 Massachusetts Avenue
Cambridge, MA 02138
United States

Jean Dreze

Ranchi University ( email )

Department of Economics
Ranchi University
Ranchi, Jharkhand 834001
India

Do you have a job opening that you would like to promote on SSRN?

Paper statistics

Downloads
1,161
Abstract Views
5,871
Rank
28,738
PlumX Metrics