Teenage Births and Final Adult Height of Mothers in India, 1998–1999

This paper investigates the statistical association between teenage births and the physical growth path of these mothers. It draws on data on the height of ever-married women aged 15-49 and their birth histories collected in India's National Family Health Survey in 1998-99, and shows that there was a negative relationship between final adult height of women and the number of births they had as teenagers. Using multiple regression analysis, it is shown that this negative relationship is robust to confounding factors such as standard of living, urban-rural residence, state of origin in India and age of the women.