Publication: How Much International Variation in Child Height Can Sanitation Explain?
Date
2013-01
ISSN
Published
2013-01
Author(s)
Spears, Dean
Abstract
Physical height is an important economic
variable reflecting health and human capital. Puzzlingly,
however, differences in average height across developing
countries are not well explained by differences in wealth.
In particular, children in India are shorter, on average,
than children in Africa who are poorer, on average, a
paradox called "the Asian enigma" which has
received much attention from economists. This paper provides
the first documentation of a quantitatively important
gradient between child height and sanitation that can
statistically explain a large fraction of international
height differences. This association between sanitation and
human capital is robustly stable, even after accounting for
other heterogeneity, such as in GDP. The author applies
three complementary empirical strategies to identify the
association between sanitation and child height:
country-level regressions across 140 country-years in 65
developing countries; within-country analysis of differences
over time within Indian districts; and econometric
decomposition of the India-Africa height differences in
child-level data. Open defecation, which is exceptionally
widespread in India, can account for much or all of the
excess stunting in India.
Link to Data Set
Citation
“Spears, Dean. 2013. How Much International Variation in Child Height Can Sanitation Explain?. Policy Research Working Paper;No. 6351. © World Bank, Washington, DC. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/13163 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.”
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