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Journal of Quantitative Economics

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29-11-2019 | Original Article

Selective Mortality and Malnutrition in India

Author: Pallavi Panda

Published in: Journal of Quantitative Economics | Issue 4/2020

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Abstract

India presents itself as a paradox with low infant mortality and high malnutrition. This paper provides survival bias as an explanation of the paradox. Using pooled health surveys from 1993 to 2005 and a pseudo-panel selection model, this study finds that the change in Height-for-Age Z-Scores (HAZ scores) can be explained by mortality selection. Specifically, children with sample average characteristics that survive have 17.4% less HAZ scores than a child randomly drawn from the population indicating an overestimation of malnutrition in India. This is consistent with the hypothesis of weaker children surviving due to skilled delivery which pulls down the overall HAZ scores. The results are robust to controls for unobservable characteristics of groups of women. Son preference is also apparent in the results. The selection is more evident among male children and in the states where sex selection is historically seen as a problem in India.

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For example, Chad had infant mortality rate of 124 vis-a-vis 50 for India in 2009. While, Chad had 44.8% children below the age 5 as stunted while 47.9% in India for the same period (World Health Organization 2011).

HAZ Scores are the most common anthropometric measure to track malnutrition and is used by UN and WHO. I focus on height instead of weight because height is considered as a long-run measure of an individual's health (Behrman and Deolalikar 1988). But, I do also check for robustness of results with WAZ scores.

http://www.rchiips.org/nfhs.

One problem that can be raised with the recall data is the measurement error problem. Since the birth histories do not go too much into the past, it is lesser of a problem in this case. Moreover, since deaths of a child are important in a mother’s life, this variable should be recorded without much measurement error.

I also check for the mortality selection effect if I constrain the results to children born under 36 months across different survey years in Table 6. The results are unchanged.

If the selection process is identical over time, then the fixed effects estimator will remove the selection bias in a panel data.

I use the 2006 WHO standards for HAZ, computed using the Stata package “haz06" which requires the data for age, height, and gender from NFHS. I have also run this using the HAZ scores reported in the NFHS. But, it does not change the results qualitatively.

Including different characteristics with missing values, increases the number of cohorts but decreases the observations within cohorts; which is not desirable computationally and otherwise for consistency (Borjas and Sueyoshi 1994).

Correlation of inverse Mills ratio with other independent variables are provided in the Appendix Table 8.

Skilled delivery assistance is measured by delivery being assisted by doctors, nurse/midwife, auxiliary midwife, ayurvedic doctor, and any other India-specific health professional. It is not considered as skilled assistance if the baby is born with the help of trained birth attendant, traditional birth attendant, relatives, other persons, or no one.

A z-score of zero indicates the median of gender and age specific reference population, − 1 is 1 standard deviation below and + 1 is 1 standard deviation above the reference median population.

Similarly, percentage change in HAZ also differs by gender and birth order, as shown in Appendix Fig. 8.

Since mother cohorts are defined by the place of residence, heterogeneity for urban and rural areas cannot be carried out at the mother cohort level. The analysis for the heterogeneity has been performed with state fixed effects.

Graph in Appendix Fig. 5.

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Title: Selective Mortality and Malnutrition in India
Author: Pallavi Panda
Publication date: 29-11-2019
Publisher: Springer India
Published in: Journal of Quantitative Economics / Issue 4/2020
Print ISSN: 0971-1554
Electronic ISSN: 2364-1045
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40953-019-00194-8

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