ArticleJournal of development economics2020
Exposure to open defecation can account for the Indian enigma of child height.
Article in Journal of development economics, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 27 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
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Who cites it
27 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 92 citations in OpenAlex.
- The decline of child stunting in 122 countries: a systematic review of child growth studies since the 19th century.BMJ global health · 2026Pooled it
- Does humidity matter? Prenatal heat and child health in South Asia.Science advances · 2025Article
- Water quality and child undernutrition: evidence from 29 low- and middle-income countries and territories.Bulletin of the World Health Organization · 2025Article
- Public sanitation interventions and household clean energy adoption: Evidence from China's renovating water supply and toilets.PloS one · 2025Article
- Toilet construction under the Swachh Bharat Mission and infant mortality in India.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- Open Defecation, Livestock Ownership, and Child Nutritional Status in India.The American journal of tropical medicine and hygiene · 2024Article
- Deworming and micronutrient status by community open defecation prevalence: An observational study using nationally representative data from India, 2016-2018.PLoS medicine · 2024Observational
- Examining toilet use and menstrual hygiene practices among beneficiary households of Swachh Bharat Abhiyaan (Clean India Mission) in rural areas of Mayurbhanj district of Odisha, India.Journal of family medicine and primary care · 2024Article
- The Association Between Maternal Age at Childbirth and Child Nutritional Outcomes: A Cross-sectional Study From Serbian Roma Communities.Global pediatric health · 2024Article
- Article
- Growth in milk consumption and reductions in child stunting: Historical evidence from cross-country panel data.Food policy · 2023Article
- Demographic, social and economic factors affecting the adoption of green toilets among rural households in India.Environment, development and sustainability · 2023Article
- The dirty business of eliminating open defecation: The effect of village sanitation on child height from field experiments in four countries.Journal of development economics · 2022Article
- Risk factors for early childhood growth faltering in rural Cambodia: a cross-sectional study.BMJ open · 2022Article
- Paternal investment, stepfather presence and early child development and growth among Serbian Roma.Evolutionary human sciences · 2022Article
- Gender and LPG use after government intervention in rural north India.World development · 2021Article
- Climate change, social vulnerability and child nutrition in South Asia.Global environmental change : human and policy dimensions · 2021Article
- Child Undernutrition following the Introduction of a Large-Scale Toilet Construction Campaign in India.The Journal of nutrition · 2021Observational
- Safely Managed On-Site Sanitation: A National Assessment of Sanitation Services and Potential Fecal Exposure in Indonesia.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2021Article
- NEONATAL DEATH IN INDIA: BIRTH ORDER IN A CONTEXT OF MATERNAL UNDERNUTRITION.Economic journal (London, England) · 2021Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
1 author at 1 institution in 2 countries.
Funding
Abstract
Physical height is an important measure of human capital. However, differences in average height across developing countries are poorly explained by economic differences. Children in India are shorter than poorer children in Africa, a widely studied puzzle called "the Asian enigma." This paper proposes and quantitatively investigates the hypothesis that differences in sanitation - and especially in the population density of open defecation - can statistically account for an important component of the Asian enigma, India's gap relative to sub-Saharan Africa. The paper's main result computes a demographic projection of the increase in the average height of Indian children, if they were counterfactually exposed to sub-Saharan African sanitation, using a non-parametric reweighting method. India's projected increase in mean height is at least as large as the gap. The analysis also critically reviews evidence from recent estimates in the literature. Two possible mechanisms are effects on children and on their mothers.
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.