PAPER REVIEW OF

WHY ARE INDIAN CHILDREN SO SHORT?

THE ROLE OF BIRTH ORDER AND SON PREFERENCE.
By Seema Jayachandran and Rohini Pande

This report explores the journal paper written by Jayachandran & Pande (2017) regarding the
reasons why Indian children are stunted in height. The authors explain that, compared to
areas such as sub-Saharan Africa, India’s statistics in child stunting have surpassed to
immense levels. They have accessed the information of more than 168,000 children from
India as well as twenty-five African nations in order to explain why the Indian children are
short in height. They have utilized numerous methods to guarantee that the observed rising
birth order scale is not established by the diverse choice of Indian household. Initially, they
measure the neighbourhood qualities and maternal behaviour that are connected with fertility
and birth results, and identify same patterns. Next, they get strong outcomes regarding child
height while assessing the designs with the sibling variable. Lastly, holding the data of the
pregnant women who were ready to give birth, the study was able to acknowledge two
distinct patterns. In both patterns, the authors were able to discover that, equivalent to birth
order, the total fertility was able to be controlled in a flexible manner. With this revelation,
the authors have found that the fertility decisions of parents are influenced by the preference
of eldest son in India. Moreover, the resource allocation among children is also allocated by
parents based on gender, which results in the stunted height rate of children. Another
discovery made by the authors is that the gender composition of older siblings also acts as a
major decision-maker regarding the height of successive children in the family.
At first, the authors began documenting the major aspect that was highlighted in their
evaluation, which is the stunted characteristic of child height and its abrupt birth order scale
in India compared to Africa. Basically, they separated the age and height by birth order for
African and Indian children, and discovered that at birth order 2, a shortage occurred on
Indian children’s height, which only increased during the 3rd birth order and continued to do
so. Thus, they were able to find concerns related to endogeneity in numerous manners.
Numerous calculations and analysis were conducted using IHDS data among the kids of
females who had completed their fertility period in both Africa and India. Then, they
conducted the same calculations and analysis within India. Lastly, they were able to contrast
and compare both data they received in previous calculations with the help of robustness
checks. They were able to conclude that the rate of short-height in Indian children is seen
twice or thrice as large compared to African children.
The authors also conducted the same research of comparing Indian children to African ones
with countries like Pakistan and Bangladesh; particularly because those two countries are the
neighbouring countries of India. They were able to identify that religion and the religious
settings of Indians differed vastly from that of the other two countries. For instance, four-
fifths of the citizens of India were Hindu while the other countries did not have such a vast
amount of Hindu religion followers. The followers of Hinduism prefer their eldest child to be
a boy, as evidenced by prior literature. As such, the fact that Hindus prefer their eldest to be a
son is evidenced twice in the paper. Initially, religious difference and regional dissimilarities
within the country demonstrates that when the preference of a son is lower, the stunted birth
scale in height is thinner. Then, the authors also demonstrate that there is a difference in the
stunted birth scale while considering the siblings’ gender structure in a way that is consistent
with the partiality of an eldest son. These two evidences are the main reason why Indian
children are so short.
To clarify, the authors explain that Indian families prefer their eldest to be a son, and will
favour him over his siblings. Moreover, if a girl is born in that family, she would have to
fight for her resources, particularly because the son is preferred over the daughter by the
parents. This desire of sons over daughters impacts the fertility decisions of the parents in
many ways. The paper also offers four predictions, which are discussed and evidenced with
calculations and measurements. As such, their first prediction is that in India, both male and
female children will display an abrupt birth order scale compared to the male and female
children of Africa. The second prediction is that the height gap between the Indian and the
African girls would be comparatively noticeable, particularly due to the preference and
treatment of male children in India. The third prediction is that, female children in India who
do not have brothers will face numerous drawbacks after their birth compared to that of
African female children. They would not have to face such issues during the pregnancy of
their mothers, since the gender of the child will not be revealed in the first few months.
Finally, the paper predicts that the results for children in India will differ with birth order and
sibling arrangement compared to that of African children’. For instance, if the eldest child is
not a son, the family will tend to have another child, just so that they could have a son. This is
common in Indian households, and results in a 19% increase of child bearing in India
compared to that of Africa. The difference is so large, that on average, mothers in India are 6
cm shorter compared to mothers in Africa.
The paper also explains about cultural customs, particularly shared nurturing of children. In
Indian households, when there is more than one child – with the eldest being a son – the time
spent by parents to care for their younger children would be comparatively less than that of
what they usually spend for their eldest child. The paper provides accounting exercises which
indicate that in an Indian setting that prefers eldest son compared to other children, the scale
of birth order will vary and have severe consequences for average height differences.
Finally, the paper considers about subgroups inside of India and demonstrates that subgroups
with lower inclination to an eldest child display a thinner rate in stunted birth order. In
addition, the authors also infer an array of expectations connecting the gender arrangement of
Indian siblings with the degree of inconsistent resource allotment within the family. They
finally conclude that all their four predictions are supported in and evidenced by the provided
data.
The paper demonstrates that the stunted height of children in India begins with the second
born child and escalates with the birth order. The authors conclude that this issue is caused in
Indian families due to their preference of a male child as their first child. Compared to Africa,
two-thirds of Indian children are extremely short, and the statistics do not seem to be
decreasing, as evidenced by an accounting exercise in the paper. The regressions in the paper
are not able to influence the general family size, which shows that this paper omits the main
variable, which is the inclusion of low-fertility families.
Although the paper analyses religion and regions as variables to predict four major patterns, it
does not evaluate other patterns such as the difference of health inputs with gender and birth
order; the impact of postnatal and prenatal treatments of female children by parents who have
an eldest son; and the height differences of the eldest child if it is a male versus if it is a
female. In future studies, these variables would be useful to provide a wide explanation of
how and why Indian children are short in height. Nonetheless, this paper was successful in
explaining with evidence about the fundamental reasons as to why Indian children are so
short compared to that of African children.