Department of Agricultural Economics and Rural Development, University of Göttingen, ID Insight India Private Limited, New Delhi, India.
University of Göttingen, USA.
Econ Hum Biol. 2023 Apr;49:101237. doi: 10.1016/j.ehb.2023.101237. Epub 2023 Mar 4.
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.
本文重新探讨了有关印度之谜的争议，即印度慢性营养不足的高发率相对于撒哈拉以南非洲而言。Jayachandran 和 Pande（JP）认为，解开印度之谜的关键在于对较高出生顺序儿童（尤其是女孩）的较差待遇。我们分析了新数据，并考虑到与模型规范、权重以及对 JP 的现有批评有关的问题，发现：（1）参数估计对抽样设计和模型规范敏感；（2）学前非洲儿童和印度儿童身高差距正在缩小；（3）差距似乎不是由出生顺序和儿童性别差异引起的；（4）剩余差距与母亲身高的差异有关；（5）如果印度妇女的身高与非洲妇女相同，学前印度儿童的身高将超过学前非洲儿童；（5）一旦我们考虑到调查设计、兄弟姐妹数量和母亲身高，与印度女孩相关的系数就不再具有统计学意义。
