Page 166 - 5th APA Conference Program Book Final

1514 Age-time dimension of growth faltering in Indian children over the period
1992—2016

Pravat Bhandari, Suryakant Yadav
International Institute for Population Sciences, Mumbai, India

Categories

13. Others (Education, Wellbeing and Happiness etc.)

Abstract

‘Growth faltering’ among children describes a rapid shortfall in height- and weight-for-age during the first two years
of life. Using anthropometric and socio-economic data from four rounds of National Family and Health Survey,
conducted between 1992 and 2016, we aimed to understand the age-time dimension of growth faltering among
the Indian children. We applied non-parametric techniques to construct nutrition-age profile of under-five children.
Further, we conducted an in-depth analysis of the role of within-mother variation in age-related heterogeneity. Our
preliminary results, portraying the non-linear relationship between child’s age and nutritional indicators, suggest
that likelihood of faltered growth (for both height-for-age and weight-for-age ) increases with every unit increase in
age up to around 22 months and beyond that a sinusoidal pattern around the negative axis is evident up to the age
of 59 months. These patterns were largely similar across all four survey years with slight improvements after 2006.
Further, we note that several maternal factors predict the best shifts and bends in the nutrition-age curves of the
children. The documented interactions between maternal factors and child-age further underscores the need not
only to provide nutrition support during the first two years of life but also to improve maternal conditions.

708 Understanding the Cognitive Performance of children in India

1
2
Mausam Garg , Poulomi Chowdhury
1 IIPS, Mumbai, India. University of Canberra, Canberra, Australia
2
Categories

13. Others (Education, Wellbeing and Happiness etc.)

Abstract

This study sheds light to understand the influence of educational infrastructure, school type and nutritional status
of children on their cognitive performance using a longitudinal data IHDS-2. Cognitive performance is composed
of three indicators i.e. reading, writing and numerical skill of the children. The education infrastructure index has
been prepared using principle component analysis for which several indicators was considered e.g. number of
classrooms, electricity, water source, toilet facility and physical structure. Result shows that there is significant
difference between govt. and private schools in terms cognitive index as well as education infrastructure.
Furthermore, result of linear regression shows that nutrition of children, number of children, type of school, school
infrastructure and student-teacher ratio significantly affect the cognitive ability of the children. The study clearly
shows that there is wide inequality of education among children. Children who are studying in private school
performs better than the children in government schools because in private schools the availability of infrastructure

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