Malnutrition and female political representation in India

Principal Investigator(s):  View help for Principal Investigator(s) Philippe LeMay-Boucher, Heriot-Watt University

Version:  View help for Version V1

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Project Citation: 

LeMay-Boucher, Philippe. Malnutrition and female political representation in India. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2026-02-09. https://doi.org/10.3886/E245012V1

Project Description

Summary:  View help for Summary Malnutrition casts a negative shadow over the course of the lives of a fifth of children under the age of five who are stunted worldwide. Despite two decades of growth, India has one of the highest wasting and stunting rates. Lack of political awareness and poor governance, arguably related to an acute underrepresentation of women in politics in India may explain why not enough is committed to this matter. Increasing women’s political agency in elected bodies has brought several documented benefits yet little is known about its impact on children’s nutrition outcomes. Our analysis shows that increasing women’s political representation in India’s state legislatures could reduce child malnutrition. We use a large cross-sectional district representative household survey collected between 2002-4 through the second round of the District Level Household Survey. It is merged with detailed state legislative assembly election data we collected. These detail who contested seats in each constituency and the gender composition of elected representatives in India’s 17 largest states between 1993 and 2004. We find that a ten-percentage point increase in women’s representation leads to a three to five percentage point reduction in the likelihood of a child being underweight. Malnutrition is a multi-faceted issue with different underlying causes, and our work explores some of these. We document that greater female political representation creates productive ways to enhance public health by bringing improvements in households’ access to basic amenities and to prenatal, birth and postnatal care among mothers. 

The dataset deposited is used for a forthcoming publication in PLOS ONE. This upload forms part of the requirements from the journal PLOS ONE so that replications can be done.

Scope of Project

Subject Terms:  View help for Subject Terms India; Malnutrition; Gender
Geographic Coverage:  View help for Geographic Coverage India
Time Period(s):  View help for Time Period(s) 1/1/2002 – 12/31/2004
Collection Date(s):  View help for Collection Date(s) 1/1/2002 – 12/31/2004
Universe:  View help for Universe This dataset represents a subset of the data from the second round of the District Level Household Survey (District Level Household Survey, DLHS-2) which were collected between 2002 and 2004 in India. DLHS-2 survey provides cross-sectional information on anthropometry measurement of weight for children aged 0-71 months. DLHS-2 covers the whole of India and is nationally representative, with 593 districts across 36 states and union territories.

The DLHS was used by the Government of India for monitoring 1) people’s perceptions of the quality of health services; 2) the utilization of health facilities provided both by the government and private parties; and 3) the progress made with respect to the Reproductive and Child Health (RCH) programme. This required district level data. Round two of the survey was completed between 2002-04 in 593 districts. The district level household survey covered a representative sample of about 1,000 households in each district. All married women aged 15-44 in the sample were interviewed. 

Data Type(s):  View help for Data Type(s) survey data
Collection Notes:  View help for Collection Notes Details on collection notes can be found here: https://ghdx.healthdata.org/record/india-district-level-household-survey-2002-2005


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