Does living in slums or non-slums influence women's nutritional status? Evidence from Indian mega-cities

Slum Definitions in Urban India: Implications for the Measurement of Health Inequalities

“…Continued investigation of intra-urban differentials in health (Montgomery, 2009) is therefore recommended, as is more widespread acknowledgement that slums are not homogenous entities (Gaur et al, 2013), but complex and dynamic. One important area of future research is to investigate the use of a slum scale, which may provide more information than a dichotomous slum measure.…”

“…Although the mechanisms – social interactive, environmental, geographic, or institutional, just to name a few (Galster, 2010) – by which community-level poverty may be associated with poor health outcomes are still under investigation, poor health in slum areas has been found mainly in Sub-Saharan Africa (Bocquier et al, 2011, Günther and Harttgen, 2012) and South Asia, particularly Bangladesh (Gruebner et al., 2011) and India (Gaur et al, 2013, Hazarika, 2010). Close living quarters, poor sanitation, and lack of access to potable water (Sclar et al, 2005), all characteristics of “slum-like” communities, are likely to produce poor health over and above the effects of simply living in a poor household and other individual-level characteristics (Rice and Rice, 2009).…”

Overweight and obesity prevalence among Indian women by place of residence and socio-economic status: Contrasting patterns from ‘underweight states’ and ‘overweight states’ of India

“…A study conducted in Cameroon during 1994e2003 suggests that overweight and obesity loomed large in urban areas and demonstrated no change during the study period; whereas overweight started rising at very fast in rural areas (Fezeu et al, 2008). An analysis based on eight Indian cities show that nutritional status among women is not significantly associated with lowly developed slum areas or with developed non-slum areas (Gaur et al, 2013). In some parts of Chennai (the capital city of Tamil Nadu state of India), it was found that during 1989e2003 there was a rapid escalation of overweight residents in rural areas than urban areas (Ramachandran and Snehalatha, 2010).…”

Using Satellite Data to Delineate Slum and Non-slum Sample Domains for an Urban Population Survey in Uttar Pradesh, India

“…However, further multivariate analyses of the 2005/06 NFHS data demonstrated that slum dwellers were worse-off on reproductive health indicators including contraceptive use, delivery at a health facility, and skilled attendance at delivery, controlling for background individual and household characteristics (Hazarika 2010). More recent analyses of the 2005/06 NFHS data demonstrate that women in slum areas were more likely to be malnourished compared to their non-slum counterparts, who were also more likely to be overweight or obese compared to slum-dwellers (Gaur, Keshri et al 2012). Finally, Rooban and colleagues found that male slum-dwellers were more likely to use tobacco and thus at greater risk of chronic and tobacco-related illness (Rooban, Joshua et al 2012).…”