Multidimensional child growth in India: Exploring the potential of using the Capabilities Approach for empirical analysis focusing on very young children

Introduction: In the past few decades, scholars of child nutrition and healthy growth have become increasingly interested in studying the social determinants of growth faltering. Both academics and practitioners have attempted to develop conceptual frameworks of child growth that go beyond the immediate factors that lead to malnutrition (i.e. nutritional input) to capture the root causes of growth faltering. These new frameworks suggest that child growth is influenced not only by nutritional inputs, but by economic arrangements, resource allocation patterns, and societal settings. Yet despite these theoretical innovations, anthropometric outcomes remain the sole focus of child growth monitoring and measurement. In this paper, we aim to explore how the Capabilities Approach could be operationalized to conduct empirical analysis on child growth. Our study is the first to define child growth as a multi-dimensional concept with a set of outcome indicators, and is also the first to apply the CA to evaluate child growth empirically. Data and Methodology: We use the latest available DHS data (2005-2006) and perform fuzzy analysis in evaluating children's healthy growth in India. Applying fuzzy analysis enables us to measure the plural space of outcomes. Operationalizing the capability approach for child growth using DHS data proved challenging, primarily because data on several dimensions that are defined by the Capability Framework to Child Growth are lacking in the dataset. Results: The results of our analysis of the available data suggest that in children with low height for age, several other capabilities in addition to the capability to be nourished are not fully achieved in either children or their caregivers. However, richer data would be required to further optimize the potential of the Capability Framework to Child Growth. (author)