Association of Women's Status with Child Malnutrition in India

Current study is devoted to the statistical analysis of association between women's status and child malnutrition based on DHS survey conducted in 2015-16. The relevance of this research is beyond controversy as India is one of the countries with extremely high prevalence of child malnutrition, taking into account the socio-economic development in recent decades. The paper provides theoretical background of concepts devoted to women's status and child malnutrition. The descriptive and comparative analysis of the socio-economic situation of India and other regions was conducted. To examine the association between explanatory and dependent variables the logistic regression was estimated. The main results confirm the hypothesis about the association between women's status and child malnutrition. From one side, there is a direct link between variables: higher women's status is associated with lower probability of being stunted. From another side, women's status impacts nutritional status of a child through nutritional status of mothers.