Assessment of growth performance of children in last fifteen years and developing new standard growth curves of children’s nutritional status for India

Rachana Patel, International Institute for Population Sciences (IIPS)

Study based on anthropometric indicators of growth, reveals that during last fifteen years (1992-2006) the malnutrition level of Indian children under age three has been come down but this is slow in process. Data from three rounds of National Family and Health Survey (NFHS) explore that percentage of stunted and underweight children has been somewhat decreased over the period but wasted children are little a bit increased. However, percentage of severely malnourished children is not much decreased from NFHS-I to NFHS-II but came down further during NHFS-III at each age. About 50 percent children are underweight, 40 percent are stunted and one fifth is wasted (percentage below -2SD). Further study will be carried out for making comparison of nutritional level of children by using WHO (2006) growth standard with NCHS classification and a new growth standard will be tried to develop for Indian children using NFHS data.