Patriarchy and Child Well-Being: Evidence from India

Abstract The nutrition and care received in childhood can have a profound impact on the adult life of an individual. Governments and the United Nations have emphasized proper care and nutrition for children, and the Sustainable Development Goals have targeted the elimination of stunting and wasting of children under the age of 5 by 2030. However, South Asia is lagging behind in this metric; the World Bank has noted that about 32 percent of Indian children under age of 5 is stunted, while the world average is 22 percent. While a number of studies have looked into ways of improving well-being of a child, and women’s empowerment, the relationship between patriarchy and children well-being has not been extensively studied. In this paper, we use data from the 2019 Demographic and Health Survey of India to study this relationship. We modify the patriarchy index outlined in Singh et al (2022) and use it in our paper. Our primary dependent variable is the standardized height-for-age percentile. We find that patriarchy negatively affects child height in the northern parts of India, and among certain religious groups. We theorize that culture of the land together with religion of the household impacts how patriarchy affects child height.