ALL ELSE EQUAL - A CAPABILITY FRAMEWORK TO CHILD GROWTH MEASUREMENT

• Published in: Annals of nutrition and metabolism 2017-10, Vol.71 (Suppl. 2), p.76
• Main Author: Dhagati, Sepideh Yousefzadeh Faal
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Age; Aggression; Allocations; Anthropometry; Autonomy; Breast feeding; Children; Children & youth; Childrens health; Demographics; Economic conditions; Education; Empirical analysis; Epidemiology; Human growth; Human nutrition; Integrity; Nutrition; Religion; Sanitation; Social change; Social interactions; Violence
• ISSN: 0250-6807; 1421-9697
• DOI: 10.1159/000480486

In the past few decades, scholars of child nutrition and healthy growth have increasingly become interested in scrutinizing the social determinants of growth faltering. Those efforts were crucial to argue that child growth is not only about nutritional inputs, but also about the economic arrangements and resource allocations, societal settings and individual differences. Nevertheless, when it comes to the monitoring and measurement of child growth, anthropometric outcomes remain to be the sole output to be evaluated. In this paper, we claim that, by measuring the anthropometric indicators as the key output, we do not pay due attention to the plurality of elements that interact together to make healthy growth. The paper applies the Capability Framework to Child Growth (CFCG) as the conceptual framework. The CFCG helps bringing a multidimensional paradigm to the measurement level. This paper defines child healthy growth as the process of continuous physical, psychological and social change that builds a child's capacities to maximize life chances at the individual and societal level. The paper aims to examine how a CFCG gives insights into multiple attributes of healthy growth as a set of capabilities. I use Demographic Health Survey data on India (2005-2006) as the case study. Capabilities of healthy growth are defined under eight core dimensions: life and physical health; love and care; bodily integrity; education; shelter and environment; respect and personal autonomy; social relations and mobility. Some of the findings of this paper include: Of all dimensions of child healthy growth, the mean achieved functionings are lowest under the "utilization of childcare services," "information", and "sanitation". Children with higher and lower functionings for healthy growth are not equal in their parental education and in using prenatal and breastfeeding services. Furthermore, our analysis suggest that improving utilization of prenatal services, information, sanitation and birth registration improves height for age (fertile functionings). This is while disadvantage under physical integrity (domestic violence) and service dignity has negative impacts on height for age (corrosive effect). At the first glance, our results may sound similar to studies that apply Social Epidemiology (SE). The paper elaborates in detail on differences between CFCG and SE at the conceptual and empirical level. However, one key difference is about distinguishing social and individual cha