Prepregnancy body mass and weight gain during pregnancy in India and sub-Saharan Africa

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
Diane Coffey

Abstract

Despite being wealthier, Indian children are significantly shorter and smaller than African children. These differences begin very early in life, suggesting that they may in part reflect differences in maternal health. By applying reweighting estimation strategies to the Demographic and Health Surveys, this paper reports, to my knowledge, the first representative estimates of prepregnancy body mass index and weight gain during pregnancy for India and sub-Saharan Africa. I find that 42.2% of prepregnant women in India are underweight compared with 16.5% of prepregnant women in sub-Saharan Africa. Levels of prepregnancy underweight for India are almost seven percentage points higher than the average fraction underweight among women 15-49 y old. This difference in part reflects a previously unquantified relationship among age, fertility, and underweight; childbearing is concentrated in the narrow age range in which Indian women are most likely to be underweight. Further, because weight gain during pregnancy is low, averaging about 7 kg for a full-term pregnancy in both regions, the average woman in India ends pregnancy weighing less than the average woman in sub-Saharan Africa begins pregnancy. Poor maternal health among Indian wo...Continue Reading

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Citations

Jan 31, 2016·Sexual & Reproductive Healthcare : Official Journal of the Swedish Association of Midwives·Jasmine FledderjohannDavid Stuckler
Mar 25, 2015·Reproductive Toxicology·Yasmin H Neggers
Nov 12, 2016·Economics and Human Biology·Caterina Alacevich, Alessandro Tarozzi
Nov 4, 2016·The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition·Ethan K GoughAmee R Manges
Jan 31, 2019·Diabetic Medicine : a Journal of the British Diabetic Association·T Cundy, R I G Holt
May 9, 2019·Maternal & Child Nutrition·Phuong Hong NguyenPurnima Menon
Jul 13, 2019·Nutrients·Rebecca L LanderOn Behalf Of The Women First Preconception Nutrition Trial Group
Oct 27, 2018·The Journal of Development Studies·Sangita Vyas, Dean Spears
Aug 23, 2017·The Science of the Total Environment·Trevon L FullerThomas B Smith
May 8, 2021·Maternal & Child Nutrition·Anoop JainS V Subramanian
Jul 20, 2021·Journal of Biosocial Science·Amrita GuptaT V Sekher

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