We propose that a preference for eldest sons in India (encompassing both a desire to have at least one son and for the eldest son to be healthy) leads families to dramatically reduce resources devoted to mothers and children over successive pregnancies, and that this drives the country’s high malnutrition rates. In a working paper, we analyse data on over 174,000 children from 25 Sub-Saharan African countries and India, drawn from recent Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS), and reveal that the Indian height disadvantage emerges with the second child and then increases with birth order. Yet these explanations fail to account for one important fact – Indian firstborns are taller than African firstborns. Ramalingaswami et al (1997) dubbed this apparent contradiction ‘The South Asian enigma,’ and explanations offered since have included South Asia’s breastfeeding and weaning conventions, its use of well water, its poorer treatment of women, and health problems associated with open defecation – which is more widespread in India than Africa and can cause children to suffer malnutrition even when they are well fed (Ramalingaswami et al 1996, Smith et al 2003, Spears 2013). Thus, despite a GDP per capita that is higher than over 60 countries’, India has the fifth-highest stunting rate in the world (UNICEF, 2013).

In 2005, 40% of Indian children under the age of five remained stunted (IIPS 2010). It has long puzzled researchers that when you look at child height – the best anthropometric measure of net nutrition – the average child born in India is more likely to be stunted than her counterpart in Sub-Saharan Africa, even though her mother is more likely to survive her birth, and her parents are probably richer and more educated (Gwatkin et al 2007).

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