Identifying geospatial patterns in wealth disparity in child malnutrition across 640 districts in India

Lathan Liou; Rockli Kim; S V Subramanian

doi:10.1016/j.ssmph.2019.100524

Identifying geospatial patterns in wealth disparity in child malnutrition across 640 districts in India

SSM Popul Health. 2019 Nov 28:10:100524. doi: 10.1016/j.ssmph.2019.100524. eCollection 2020 Apr.

Authors

Lathan Liou¹, Rockli Kim², S V Subramanian^{2

3}

Affiliations

¹ Department of Public Health and Primary Care, Cambridge University, Cambridge, UK.
² Harvard Center for Population & Development Studies, Cambridge, MA, USA.
³ Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston, MA, USA.

Abstract

We assessed district-level geospatial trends in precision weighted prevalence and absolute wealth disparity in stunting, underweight, wasting, low birthweight, and anemia among children under five in India. The largest wealth disparities were found for anthropometric failures and substantial variation existed across states. We identified statistically significant (p < 0.001) geospatial patterns in district-wide wealth disparities for all outcomes, which differed from geospatial patterns for the overall prevalence. We characterized each district as either a "Disparity", "Pitfall", "Intensity", or "Prosperity" area based on its overall burden and wealth disparity, as well as discuss the importance of considering both measures for geographically-targeted public health interventions to improve health equity.

Keywords: Child undernutrition; Districts; Geospatial; India; Wealth disparity.