Problem Considered: India's journey toward improving maternal and child health shows notable gains, yet the progress in child undernutrition is slow and uneven.Studies increasingly recognise that climatic variables influence the health and well-being.Still, few research examine the interaction of climatic variables with undernutrition in India.Therefore, this study attempts to fill this gap by empirically exploring the relationship between the interaction of temperature and rainfall with child undernutrition across 706 districts of India. Methods: This is a cross-sectional study based on the fifth round of the National Family Health Survey (NFHS) of 2019-21, where both survey and geo-covariates data are analysed at district level.The dependent variables are stunting and underweight, and temperature and rainfall are predictors along with other socio-economic variables.Descriptive statistics, lowess curves, OLS regression model and spatial analysis are used.Results: Of 706 districts in India, 41% districts had stunting and underweight above national average.The average temperature and rainfall vary across districts.We found a significant positive association of temperature with stunting and underweight but an insignificant association with rainfall.The Spatial Error Model, controlled for the spatial endogeneity, also confirm this association.The prevalence of stunting and underweight in the districts having high temperature & low rainfall was nine percentage point and 12 percentage point higher than districts with low temperature and low rainfall Conclusion: This study found that climatic variableshigh temperature and low rainfalljointly exacerbate the child undernutrition, highlighting the need of incorporating climatic interactions in designing area-specific interventions.
Sharma et al. (Fri,) studied this question.