Factors affecting malnutrition of rural adolescent girls: Evidences from selected districts of West Bengal

Adolescent malnutrition is a severe public health problem in the developing nations, including India leading to many unfavorable long-term consequences. In particular, adolescent girls living in rural areas are highly vulnerable to severe malnutrition. There is limited understanding of the underlying causes of their malnutrition. As a result, the underlying issues seem to have remained largely unaddressed in the policies, academic research and intervention strategies. In order to bridge these gaps, this study seeks to examine the factors contributing to malnutrition of rural adolescent girls in selected districts of West Bengal, India. The study uses the household level data from the fifth round of the National Family Health Survey (NFHS 5) of the Government of India and estimates binary logit and probit models to address the research objectives. It is found that over one-third of the rural adolescent girls in the state are stunted and also suffer from anemia. Additionally, the incidence of anemia in almost all the districts has increased during 2015–2016 to 2019–2021. The regression results show that the factors such as households’ socio-economic status, sex and educational attainment of the household heads, and dietary diversity have a positive impact on reducing malnutrition among these girls. While some of these findings contradict the existing literature. According to this study, visits to primary healthcare providers do not effectively reduce adolescent malnutrition. Furthermore, unmarried adolescents are more susceptible to stunting and anemia than their married counterparts. Although further research is needed to confirm the same for designing more robust intervention strategies. A deeper analysis of the underlying issues using primary data and information would provide more useful insights in this regard.