A Typology Of Dietary and Anthropometric Measures of Nutritional Need Among Children Across Districts and Parliamentary Constituencies in India, 2016

Abstract

Anthropometry is the most commonly used approach for assessing nutritional need among children. Anthropometry alone, however, cannot differentiate between the two immediate causes of undernutrition: inadequate diet vs disease. We present a typology of nutritional need by simultaneously considering dietary and anthropometric measures, dietary and anthropometric failures (DAF), and assess its distribution among children in India. Methods We used the 2015-16 National Family Health Survey, a nationally representative sample of children aged 6-23 months (n=67247), from India. Dietary failure was operationalized using World Health Organization (WHO) standards for minimum dietary diversity. Anthropometric failure was operationalized using WHO child growth reference standard z-score of