IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/fpr/ifprid/1358.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The other asian enigma: Explaining the rapid reduction of undernutrition in Bangladesh

Author

Listed:
  • Headey, Derek D.
  • Hoddinott, John F.
  • Ali, Disha
  • Tesfaye, Roman
  • Dereje, Mekdim

Abstract

South Asia has long been synonymous with persistent and unusually high rates of child undernutrition—the so-called Asian enigma. Yet contrary to this stereotype, Bangladesh has managed to sustain a rapid reduction in the rate of child undernutrition for at least two decades. In this paper we aim to understand the sources of this unheralded success with the aspiration of deriving policy-relevant lessons from Bangladesh’s experience. To do so we employ a regression analysis of five rounds of Demographic and Health Surveys covering the period from 1997 to 2011.

Suggested Citation

  • Headey, Derek D. & Hoddinott, John F. & Ali, Disha & Tesfaye, Roman & Dereje, Mekdim, 2014. "The other asian enigma: Explaining the rapid reduction of undernutrition in Bangladesh," IFPRI discussion papers 1358, International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI).
    • Handle: RePEc:fpr:ifprid:1358
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://hdl.handle.net/10568/150408
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Shareen Joshi & T. Schultz, 2013. "Family Planning and Women’s and Children’s Health: Long-Term Consequences of an Outreach Program in Matlab, Bangladesh," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 50(1), pages 149-180, February.
    2. Horton, Susan, 1988. "Birth Order and Child Nutritional Status: Evidence from the Philippines," Economic Development and Cultural Change, University of Chicago Press, vol. 36(2), pages 341-354, January.
    3. World Bank, 2006. "Repositioning Nutrition as Central to Development : A Strategy for Large Scale Action," World Bank Publications - Books, The World Bank Group, number 7409.
    4. Elder, Todd E. & Goddeeris, John H. & Haider, Steven J., 2010. "Unexplained gaps and Oaxaca-Blinder decompositions," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 17(1), pages 284-290, January.
    5. Das Gupta, Monica & Lokshin, Michael & Gragnolati, Michele & Ivaschenko, Oleksiy, 2005. "Improving child nutrition outcomes in India : can the integrated child development services be more effective?," Policy Research Working Paper Series 3647, The World Bank.
    6. Dean Spears & Arabinda Ghosh & Oliver Cumming, 2013. "Open Defecation and Childhood Stunting in India: An Ecological Analysis of New Data from 112 Districts," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 8(9), pages 1-1, September.
    7. Behrman, Jere R., 1988. "Nutrition, health, birth order and seasonality : Intrahousehold allocation among children in rural India," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 28(1), pages 43-62, February.
    8. Deon Filmer & Kinnon Scott, 2012. "Assessing Asset Indices," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 49(1), pages 359-392, February.
    9. Angus Deaton & Jean Dreze, 2008. "Nutrition in India: Facts and Interpretations," Working Papers 1071, Princeton University, Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, Research Program in Development Studies..
    10. Webb, Patrick & Block, Steven, 2004. "Nutrition Information and Formal Schooling as Inputs to Child Nutrition," Economic Development and Cultural Change, University of Chicago Press, vol. 52(4), pages 801-820, July.
    11. World Bank, 2012. "World Development Indicators 2012," World Bank Publications - Books, The World Bank Group, number 6014.
    12. Steven A. Block & William A. Masters & Priya Bhagowalia, 2012. "Does Child Undernutrition Persist Despite Poverty Reduction in Developing Countries? Quantile Regression Results," Journal of Development Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 48(12), pages 1699-1715, December.
    13. repec:pri:cheawb:deaton_dreze_india_nutrition is not listed on IDEAS
    14. repec:pri:rpdevs:deaton_dreze_india_nutrition is not listed on IDEAS
    15. Dean Spears, 2012. "How much international variation in child height can sanitation explain?," Working Papers 1436, Princeton University, Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, Research Program in Development Studies..
    16. Behrman, Jere R. & Deolalikar, Anil B., 1988. "Health and nutrition," Handbook of Development Economics, in: Hollis Chenery & T.N. Srinivasan (ed.), Handbook of Development Economics, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 14, pages 631-711, Elsevier.
    17. Robert Jensen, 2012. "Another Mouth to Feed? The Effects of (In)Fertility on Malnutrition," CESifo Economic Studies, CESifo Group, vol. 58(2), pages 322-347, June.
    18. Schreiner, Mark, 2011. "Estimating Expenditure-Based Poverty from the Bangladesh Demographic and Health Survey," Bangladesh Development Studies, Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies (BIDS), vol. 34(4), pages 65-94, December.
    19. Kanani K. M. Lee, 2009. "The enigma of D′′," Nature, Nature, vol. 462(7274), pages 731-732, December.
    20. Ben Jann, 2008. "The Blinder–Oaxaca decomposition for linear regression models," Stata Journal, StataCorp LLC, vol. 8(4), pages 453-479, December.
    21. Francesco Burchi, 2012. "Whose education affects a child’s nutritional status? From parents' to household's education," Demographic Research, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany, vol. 27(23), pages 681-704.
    22. Rohini Pande, 2003. "Selective gender differences in childhood nutrition and immunization in rural India: The role of siblings," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 40(3), pages 395-418, August.
    23. Rasmus Heltberg, 2009. "Malnutrition, poverty, and economic growth," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 18(S1), pages 77-88, April.
    24. Deon Filmer & Lant Pritchett, 2001. "Estimating Wealth Effects Without Expenditure Data—Or Tears: An Application To Educational Enrollments In States Of India," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 38(1), pages 115-132, February.
    25. Haddad, Lawrence James & Smith, Lisa C., 2000. "Explaining child malnutrition in developing countries: a cross-country analysis," Research reports 111, International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI).
    26. Chiu, Alice & Headey, Derek & Kadiyala, Suneetha, 2011. "Agriculture's role in the Indian enigma: Help or hindrance to the undernutrition crisis?," IFPRI discussion papers 1085, International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI).
    27. Behrman, Jere R & Deolalikar, Anil B, 1987. "Will Developing Country Nutrition Improve with Income? A Case Study for Rural South India," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 95(3), pages 492-507, June.
    28. Duncan Thomas & John Strauss & Maria-Helena Henriques, 1991. "How Does Mother's Education Affect Child Height?," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 26(2), pages 183-211.
    29. Headey, Derek D., 2013. "Developmental Drivers of Nutritional Change: A Cross-Country Analysis," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 42(C), pages 76-88.
    30. Lawrence Haddad & Harold Alderman & Simon Appleton & Lina Song & Yisehac Yohannes, 2003. "Reducing Child Malnutrition: How Far Does Income Growth Take Us?," The World Bank Economic Review, World Bank, vol. 17(1), pages 107-131, June.
    31. repec:ucp:bknber:9780226740867 is not listed on IDEAS
    32. Behrman, Jere R. & Wolfe, Barbara L., 1984. "More evidence on nutrition demand : Income seems overrated and women's schooling underemphasized," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 14(1), pages 105-128.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Headey, Derek D. & Hoddinott, John F., 2014. "Understanding the rapid reduction of undernutrition in Nepal, 2001-2011," IFPRI discussion papers 1384, International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI).
    2. Ervin, Paul A. & Bubak, Vit, 2019. "Closing the rural-urban gap in child malnutrition: Evidence from Paraguay, 1997–2012," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 32(C), pages 1-10.
    3. Headey, Derek D., 2014. "An analysis of trends and determinants of child undernutrition in Ethiopia, 2000†2011," ESSP working papers 70, International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI).
    4. Derek Headey & David Stifel & Liangzhi You & Zhe Guo, 2018. "Remoteness, urbanization, and child nutrition in sub‐Saharan Africa," Agricultural Economics, International Association of Agricultural Economists, vol. 49(6), pages 765-775, November.
    5. Headey, Derek D., 2013. "Developmental Drivers of Nutritional Change: A Cross-Country Analysis," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 42(C), pages 76-88.
    6. Rashid, Dewan Arif & Smith, Lisa C. & Rahman, Tauhidur, 2011. "Determinants of Dietary Quality: Evidence from Bangladesh," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 39(12), pages 2221-2231.
    7. Brown,Caitlin Susan & Kandpal,Eeshani & Lee,Jean Nahrae & Williams,Anaise Marie, 2022. "Unequal Households or Communities ? Decomposing the Inequality in Nutritional Status in South Asia," Policy Research Working Paper Series 10009, The World Bank.
    8. Derek D. Headey & Marie T. Ruel, 2022. "Economic shocks predict increases in child wasting prevalence," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 13(1), pages 1-9, December.
    9. Matthias Rieger & Sofia Karina Trommlerová, 2016. "Age-Specific Correlates of Child Growth," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 53(1), pages 241-267, February.
    10. Kirk, Angeli & Kilic, Talip & Carletto, Calogero, 2018. "Composition of Household Income and Child Nutrition Outcomes Evidence from Uganda," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 109(C), pages 452-469.
    11. Kirk, Angeli & Kilic, Talip & Carletto, Calogero, 2015. "How Does Composition of Household Income Affect Child Nutrition Outcomes? Evidence from Uganda," 2015 Conference, August 9-14, 2015, Milan, Italy 212006, International Association of Agricultural Economists.
    12. Harold Alderman & Derek Headey, 2018. "The timing of growth faltering has important implications for observational analyses of the underlying determinants of nutrition outcomes," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 13(4), pages 1-16, April.
    13. Alderman, Harold & Headey, Derek D., 2017. "How Important is Parental Education for Child Nutrition?," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 94(C), pages 448-464.
    14. Pallavi Panda, 2020. "Selective Mortality and Malnutrition in India," Journal of Quantitative Economics, Springer;The Indian Econometric Society (TIES), vol. 18(4), pages 861-890, December.
    15. Indunil De Silva & Sudarno Sumarto, 2018. "Child Malnutrition in Indonesia: Can Education, Sanitation and Healthcare Augment the Role of Income?," Journal of International Development, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 30(5), pages 837-864, July.
    16. Jing You, 2014. "Dietary change, nutrient transition and food security in fast-growing China," Chapters, in: Raghbendra Jha & Raghav Gaiha & Anil B. Deolalikar (ed.), Handbook on Food, chapter 9, pages 204-245, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    17. Behrman, Jere R. & Skoufias, Emmanuel, 2004. "Correlates and determinants of child anthropometrics in Latin America: background and overview of the symposium," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 2(3), pages 335-351, December.
    18. Ashish Singh, 2011. "Inequality of Opportunity in Indian Children: The Case of Immunization and Nutrition," Population Research and Policy Review, Springer;Southern Demographic Association (SDA), vol. 30(6), pages 861-883, December.
    19. Dithmer, Jan & Abdulai, Awudu, 2017. "Does trade openness contribute to food security? A dynamic panel analysis," Food Policy, Elsevier, vol. 69(C), pages 218-230.
    20. Indranil Dutta & Shruti Kapoor & Prasanta K. Pattanaik, 2020. "Nutrient consumption in India: Evidence from a village study," Review of Development Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 24(3), pages 855-877, August.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    maternal and child health; education; undernutrition; health; malnutrition; family planning; nutrition; children; hygiene; health services; Bangladesh; Southern Asia; Asia;
    All these keywords.

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:fpr:ifprid:1358. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/ifprius.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.