Short Women and Their Stagnating Growth: A Study of Biological Welfare and Inequality of Women in Postcolonial India

This chapter describes a study that focused on the health of females in India during the 20th century, specifically between 1950 and 1975, using anthropometric data, specifically adult stature. To circumvent issues with data availability and address issues of health and inequality, this study follows Komlos and Baten and supplements conventional indicators of welfare, such as GDP per capita, with biological welfare measures, namely individual-level adult female stature. The study used female stature to investigate the impact of economic factors on stature, specifically assessing whether improvements in the economy reached different sections of the Indian population. It is important to point that the interstate differences in postcolonial female stature do not corroborate with interstate differences in the male stature in precolonial India. It is likely that regions and states that discriminate against females could have shorter females compared to the states that do not discriminate.