Caste Differences in Child Growth: Disentangling Endowment and Investment Effects

Abstract

Using the fourth round of the Indian National Family Health Survey (NFHS-4), and subsequently replicating our results using the fifth round (NFHS-5), we document differential child physical growth patterns across caste groups in India, demonstrating that lower caste children are born shorter and grow less quickly than children from higher-caste households. We then show that, in line with work from previous rounds of the NFHS, these differences are largely explainable by observable covariates, particularly maternal characteristics and household wealth variables. Our research also reveals a previously undocumented dynamic, that the influence of these variables changes as children develop, and suggests that caste-gaps are the result of multiple mechanisms impacting the child growth process at different stages of development. Using age-disaggregated decomposition methods, we demonstrate that health endowment related variables (e.g. maternal height) largely explain birth length gaps, and that variables related to health investments (e.g. household wealth, health care usage) become increasingly influential as children age. Children from lower caste households thus face two margins generating height gaps as they age: a persistent endowment disparity present from birth, and a post birth investment differential that exacerbates the initial deficit.