Unequal Households or Communities? : Decomposing the Inequality in Nutritional Status in South Asia

Half of all undernourished women and children in South Asia are not found in the bottom 40 percent of wealth-poor households. This paper quantifies the extent to which this inequality in nutritional status arises within households versus between ho...

Full description

Bibliographic Details
Main Authors:	Brown, Caitlin, Kandpal, Eeshani, Lee, Jean, Williams, Anaise
Format:	Working Paper
Language:	English
Published:	World Bank, Washington, DC: 2022
Subjects:	NUTRITIONAL INEQUALITY NUTRITIONAL OUTCOMES HOUSEHOLD WEALTH INTRA-HOUSEHOLD INEQUALITY SANITATION TARGETING DEMOGRAPHIC AND HEALTH SURVEY ANITPOVERTY POLICY MALNUTRITION INTERVENTIONS UNDERNOURSHED INDIVIDUALS GEOGRAPHIC FOOD INTERVENTIONS SANITATION-BASED TARGETING
Online Access:	http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/099716404192212734/IDU074c917ff0c32104aa609d120265e250aa57f http://hdl.handle.net/10986/37333

id	okr-10986-37333
recordtype	oai_dc
spelling	okr-10986-373332022-04-23T05:10:37Z Unequal Households or Communities? : Decomposing the Inequality in Nutritional Status in South Asia Brown, Caitlin Kandpal, Eeshani Lee, Jean Williams, Anaise NUTRITIONAL INEQUALITY NUTRITIONAL OUTCOMES HOUSEHOLD WEALTH INTRA-HOUSEHOLD INEQUALITY SANITATION TARGETING DEMOGRAPHIC AND HEALTH SURVEY ANITPOVERTY POLICY MALNUTRITION INTERVENTIONS UNDERNOURSHED INDIVIDUALS GEOGRAPHIC FOOD INTERVENTIONS SANITATION-BASED TARGETING Half of all undernourished women and children in South Asia are not found in the bottom 40 percent of wealth-poor households. This paper quantifies the extent to which this inequality in nutritional status arises within households versus between households. In contrast to previous literature, it shows that between-household inequality explains 3.5 times as much of the variation as does inequality within households. Within the household, gender, age, and birth order are key correlates of nutritional outcomes. At the household level and accounting for community-level factors, both an index of sanitation infrastructure and the presence of an improved toilet matter independently to household wealth for nutritional outcomes. The paper concludes with a comparison of the effectiveness of targeting undernourishment using household wealth, a community sanitation infrastructure index, and, separately, the proportion of improved toilets in a community. The findings show that access to improved toilets, despite its relative simplicity, performs almost as well as household wealth and better than the community sanitation index. These findings highlight that (a) inequality between households within the same communities is an overlooked but important driver of inequality in nutritional status, and (b) community-level sanitation infrastructure may be a better indicator of nutritional status than more complicated household-level targeting measures. 2022-04-22T15:03:29Z 2022-04-22T15:03:29Z 2022-04 Working Paper http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/099716404192212734/IDU074c917ff0c32104aa609d120265e250aa57f http://hdl.handle.net/10986/37333 English Policy Research Working Paper;10009 CC BY 3.0 IGO http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/igo World Bank World Bank, Washington, DC: Policy Research Working Paper Publications & Research South Asia South Asia
repository_type	Digital Repository
institution_category	Foreign Institution
institution	Digital Repositories
building	World Bank Open Knowledge Repository
collection	World Bank
language	English
topic	NUTRITIONAL INEQUALITY NUTRITIONAL OUTCOMES HOUSEHOLD WEALTH INTRA-HOUSEHOLD INEQUALITY SANITATION TARGETING DEMOGRAPHIC AND HEALTH SURVEY ANITPOVERTY POLICY MALNUTRITION INTERVENTIONS UNDERNOURSHED INDIVIDUALS GEOGRAPHIC FOOD INTERVENTIONS SANITATION-BASED TARGETING
spellingShingle	NUTRITIONAL INEQUALITY NUTRITIONAL OUTCOMES HOUSEHOLD WEALTH INTRA-HOUSEHOLD INEQUALITY SANITATION TARGETING DEMOGRAPHIC AND HEALTH SURVEY ANITPOVERTY POLICY MALNUTRITION INTERVENTIONS UNDERNOURSHED INDIVIDUALS GEOGRAPHIC FOOD INTERVENTIONS SANITATION-BASED TARGETING Brown, Caitlin Kandpal, Eeshani Lee, Jean Williams, Anaise Unequal Households or Communities? : Decomposing the Inequality in Nutritional Status in South Asia
geographic_facet	South Asia South Asia
relation	Policy Research Working Paper;10009
description	Half of all undernourished women and children in South Asia are not found in the bottom 40 percent of wealth-poor households. This paper quantifies the extent to which this inequality in nutritional status arises within households versus between households. In contrast to previous literature, it shows that between-household inequality explains 3.5 times as much of the variation as does inequality within households. Within the household, gender, age, and birth order are key correlates of nutritional outcomes. At the household level and accounting for community-level factors, both an index of sanitation infrastructure and the presence of an improved toilet matter independently to household wealth for nutritional outcomes. The paper concludes with a comparison of the effectiveness of targeting undernourishment using household wealth, a community sanitation infrastructure index, and, separately, the proportion of improved toilets in a community. The findings show that access to improved toilets, despite its relative simplicity, performs almost as well as household wealth and better than the community sanitation index. These findings highlight that (a) inequality between households within the same communities is an overlooked but important driver of inequality in nutritional status, and (b) community-level sanitation infrastructure may be a better indicator of nutritional status than more complicated household-level targeting measures.
format	Working Paper
author	Brown, Caitlin Kandpal, Eeshani Lee, Jean Williams, Anaise
author_facet	Brown, Caitlin Kandpal, Eeshani Lee, Jean Williams, Anaise
author_sort	Brown, Caitlin
title	Unequal Households or Communities? : Decomposing the Inequality in Nutritional Status in South Asia
title_short	Unequal Households or Communities? : Decomposing the Inequality in Nutritional Status in South Asia
title_full	Unequal Households or Communities? : Decomposing the Inequality in Nutritional Status in South Asia
title_fullStr	Unequal Households or Communities? : Decomposing the Inequality in Nutritional Status in South Asia
title_full_unstemmed	Unequal Households or Communities? : Decomposing the Inequality in Nutritional Status in South Asia
title_sort	unequal households or communities? : decomposing the inequality in nutritional status in south asia
publisher	World Bank, Washington, DC:
publishDate	2022
url	http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/099716404192212734/IDU074c917ff0c32104aa609d120265e250aa57f http://hdl.handle.net/10986/37333
_version_	1764486970424164352

Unequal Households or Communities? : Decomposing the Inequality in Nutritional Status in South Asia

Similar Items