IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/cwl/cwldpp/2407.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Economic Development, Undernutrition and Diabetes

Author

Listed:
  • Kaivan Munshi

    (Yale University and Toulouse School of Economics)

  • Swapnil Singh

    (Bank of Lithuania and Kaunas University of Technology)

  • Nancy Luke

    (Pennsylvania State University)

  • Anu Mary Oommen

    (Christian Medical College)

Abstract

This research connects two seemingly unrelated facts that have recently been documented in developing countries, with important consequences for global health: (i) the weak association between nutritional status and income, and (ii) the elevated risk of diabetes among normalweight individuals. The model that we develop to reconcile these facts is based on a set point for body size that is adapted to (low) pre-modern food supply, but subsequently fails to adjust to rapid economic change. During the process of development, some individuals thus remain at their low-BMI set point, despite the increase in their income (food consumption), while others who have escaped their set point (but are not necessarily overweight) are at increased risk of diabetes. The model is tested along different dimensions with multiple data sets. Our analysis indicates that many lean diabetics in developing country populations will be close to their individual- specific set point, suggesting a promising approach to diabetes control (reversal) that involves relatively little weight loss.

Suggested Citation

  • Kaivan Munshi & Swapnil Singh & Nancy Luke & Anu Mary Oommen, 2024. "Economic Development, Undernutrition and Diabetes," Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers 2407, Cowles Foundation for Research in Economics, Yale University.
    • Handle: RePEc:cwl:cwldpp:2407
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://cowles.yale.edu/sites/default/files/2024-10/d2407.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cwl:cwldpp:2407. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Brittany Ladd (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/cowleus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.