The first of the Millennium Development Goals is to substantially cut the number of households who experience

Question:

The first of the Millennium Development Goals is to substantially cut the number of households who experience extreme hunger. One of four children younger than five years of age in the world are characterized as stunted, extremely short because of malnutrition. Of these children, one half is in Asia and one third in Africa. For these children poor nutrition in the early years leaves a permanent mark, reflected in life span and earnings.

Recent work in economics has focused on the case of stunting in India. India’s stunting rate is among the highest in the world, exceedingly even that of the much poorer African nations. Moreover, despite rapid growth in the last decade, little progress has been made in reducing the stunting rate.

Seema Jayanchandran from Northwestern and Rohini Pande of Harvard’s Kennedy School examined several large data sets to try to understand why. The first clue comes from the pattern of India’s stunting.

Looking at the data, Jayannchandran and Pande learn that Indian first-born sons are actually taller than their African counterparts. Stunting emerges only for later born children, and the amount of stunting increases with the number of children. Among the most disadvantaged are girls with no older brothers whose parents continue to attempt to produce a son.

The patterns that emerge from this study put a spotlight on two of the MDG concerns: hunger and gender equality. The researchers argue that India’s high stunting rate is explicable by the strong son preference of Indian families and the concomitant decision to invest disproportionate family resources in the first-born son to insure his survival despite the family’s poverty.