The Indian Enigma revisited

Abstract

This paper re-enters the contested discussion surrounding the Indian Enigma, the high prevalence of chronic undernutrition in India relative to sub-Saharan Africa. Jayachandran & Pande (JP) argue that the key to the Indian Enigma lies in the worse treatment of higher birth order children, particularly girls. Analyzing new data, and taking into account issues relating to robustness to model specification, weighting and existing critiques of JP., we find: (1) Parameter estimates are sensitive to sampling design and model specification; (2) The gap between the heights of pre-school African and Indian children is closing; (3) The gap does not appear to be driven by differential associations by birth order and child sex; (4) The remaining gap is associated with differences in maternal heights. If Indian women had the heights of their African counterparts, pre-school Indian children would be taller than pre-school African children; and (5) Once we account for survey design, sibling size and maternal height, the coefficient associated with being an Indian girl is no longer statistically significant.

Keywords: Height; India; Indian Enigma; Nutrition; Sub-Saharan Africa.