Maharashtra’s Child Stunting Declines: What is Driving Them? Findings of a Multidisciplinary Analysis

Between 2006 and 2012, Maharashtra’s stunting rate among children under two years of age was reported to decline by 15 percentage points – one of the fastest declines in stunting seen anywhere at any time. Maharashtra, the second largest state in India with a population of over 100 million people, appears to represent a major departure from the norm. This report aims to understand the driving factors behind this rapid decline. The report draws on three source papers written by the authors, which are summarised in this overview paper: one drawing on secondary data (section 2 – Haddad 2014), one drawing on primary survey data (section 3 – Haddad and Valli 2014) and one drawing on primary qualitative data (section 4 – Barnett and Nisbett 2014).1 As will become clear, the three papers, using different methods and written by different combinations of the three principal authors, arrive at very similar conclusions, giving us greater confidence in their validity.