Child Height and Intergenerational Transmission of Health: Evidence from Ethnic Indians in India

Date: November, 21st At 11:30h

Room: 23.103 (Mercè Rodoreda Building) - Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona

Abstract: A large literature documents a widespread prevalence of small stature among Indian children as well as adults. We show that a height gap relative to a richer population such as whites in England also exists, although substantially reduced, among adult immigrants of Indian ethnicity in England. This is despite positive height selection into migration, demonstrated by ethnic Indian adults in England being on average 6-7 centimeters taller than in India. However, the difference between natives and ethnic Indians in England disappears among their younger sons and daughters, although it re-appears among adolescents. We estimate that, conditional on age, gender and parental height, ethnic Indian children of age 2 to 4 in England are 6 to 8% taller than in India. Such degree of catch up in one generation is remarkable, also because in England children of ethnic Indians have much smaller birthweight than whites, by about 0.4 kilograms on average.

 

Bio: She received her PhD in Economics from the Catholic University of Milan and is now working at the Department of Economics and Business at Universitat Pompeu Fabra as a postdoctoral researcher, on the topics of child nutrition and intergenerational transmission of health. She is part of the Policy Design and Evaluation Research in Developing Countries (PODER) network. Her main research interests include development economics, migration, health, and conflict.