Urbanization, economic access to food and child stunting prevalence Empirical evidence from urban children of 220 districts in India

Abstract : ndia has a higher child stunting prevalence than many South Asian and African nations. Child stunting is a multi-dimensional concept. The impact of most dimensions of child stunting has been studied in the last two decades, but the impact of urbanization using satellite data at cluster level and economic access to food at district level using food expenditure data has not been studied in context of India. There is negative linkage between urbanization and stunting in urban children of 220 districts in India. The Engel ratio is positively linked with child stunting, it means economic access to food is negatively associated with child stunting prevalence in India. Child diet diversity is negatively linked with child stunting. Animal source food and iron rich food consumption are also negatively associated with child stunting in urban children. India is experiencing very slow decline in child stunting prevalence in urban India. Therefore, economic access to food must be increased through economic policies by increasing income level of urban households and controlling food prices in urban India. Polices for inclusive urbanization should be used to catalyse negative association between urbanization and child stunting prevalence.