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Interventions and public health nutrition

Heterogeneity in adult anthropometry by socioeconomic factors: Indian National Family Health Survey 2006 and 2016

European Journal of Clinical Nutrition volume 74, pages 953–960 (2020)Cite this article

Subjects

Abstract

Background/Objectives

Recent evidence suggests nonconstant nature of dispersion in adult women’s body mass index (BMI) across sociodemographic groups. The overall variances in BMI and height are also shown to have substantially changed over time. We modeled complex variation in adults’ anthropometry—BMI and height—by wealth and education, and assessed their differences over time in India.

Subjects/Methods

Data from a total of 768,130 women and 180,691 men from the Indian National Family Health Survey (NFHS) 2006 and 2016 were used for the analysis. The average association between wealth and education with anthropometry was assessed from linear regression models assuming constant variance. Individual heterogeneity was modeled to obtain separate variances in anthropometry for each wealth quintile and education level. All analyses were stratified by survey year and sex.

Results

On average, the positive socioeconomic gradient in adult’s BMI and height persisted over time with slight attenuation. The residual variance in BMI ranged from 10.1 to 14.9 (7.2–11.3) by education level and 6.1 to 17.4 (5.0–13.0) by household wealth for women (men) in 2006, and they increased over time for the lower socioeconomic groups but remained the same or decreased for the higher socioeconomic groups. No significant pattern was observed for variation in height for both genders.

Conclusions

We found potential reversal in the socioeconomic patterning in BMI variability in India as suggested by the increasing dispersion among the least educated and poorest populations. For a comprehensive understanding of nutrition transition in developing countries, it is necessary to assess the changes in means and variances of anthropometry in tandem.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies, Cambridge, MA, USA

    Rockli Kim & S. V. Subramanian

  2. Department of Geography, Delhi School of Economics, University of Delhi, Delhi, India

    Praveen Kumar Pathak

  3. National Institute of Medical Statistics, Indian Council of Medical Research, New Delhi, India

    Niharika Tripathi

  4. Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences, Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston, MA, USA

    S. V. Subramanian

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  1. Rockli Kim
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  2. Praveen Kumar Pathak
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  4. S. V. Subramanian
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Contributions

Author contributions

RK and SVS conceptualized and designed research. RK carried out the analyses and wrote the paper. PKK, NT, and SVS contributed to writing of the initial draft and interpretation of data, and critically reviewed the manuscript for important intellectual content. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Correspondence to Rockli Kim.

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Kim, R., Kumar Pathak, P., Tripathi, N. et al. Heterogeneity in adult anthropometry by socioeconomic factors: Indian National Family Health Survey 2006 and 2016. Eur J Clin Nutr 74, 953–960 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41430-019-0511-0

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