Child malnourishment in Bihar: A district level analysis
- Bihar Journal of Public Administration
- 19(1), Jan-Jun, 2022: p.70-82
Malnourishment is the imbalance between demand and supply of required nutrients in the body. WHO (2020) defines malnutrition as “deficiencies, excesses or imbalances in a person’s intake of energy and/or nutrients”. A lack of attention to child malnutrition is a self-defeating agenda for development, given the impact of child malnutrition on child growth and, subsequently, the overall quality of human development. The COVID-19 pandemic has posed a serious danger that may increase the prevalence of malnutrition. It hampered the schemes like Mid-day Meal, ICDS, Anganwadi etc. However, the children’s nutritional status in terms of weight, growth, stunting etc. in Bihar has improved from 2015-16 to 2019-20 (as per NFHS data). But often, state-level averages conceal districtlevel disparities. Therefore, in this study, district-level estimates of NFHS-4 and NFHS-5 in Bihar are compared to see how far the districts have progressed toward achieving the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 2.2: “ending all forms of malnutrition by 2030 for children under 5 years of age”. We also attempt to investigate district-level correlates of child stunting in Bihar. – Reproduced