Economic inequality and double burden of malnutrition

Level of poverty has been reduced substantially in past decades in India but the economic development has also raised the chance of women being overweight or obese. By using third National Family Health Survey (NFHS-3) data in this study an effort has been made to examine evidence of economic inequality in the vulnerability of underweight vis-à-vis overweight/obese women in reproductive ages in the Indian states. The macro evidences illustrate that the women from affluent families are associated with high prevalence of overweight/obesity and low economic status associated with escalating prevalence of underweight women. The micro evidences from multivariate analysis strengthens such causational patterns of greater prevalence of underweight among high parity women contrasted by significantly higher prevalence of overweight and obesity among low parity women. The results point out that under-nutrition is still a major problem; at the same time there is an emerging challenge of dealing with the problem of overweight and obesity. Declining fertility, rising income, changing occupational profile are possible contributors to such dramatic rise in double burden of malnutrition but these risk factors are disproportionately distributed, specially to the defenselessness of poor.