Cost of Malnutrition to the Nation

I am moved by the report on malnutrition in India. I bumped onto very informative article and presentations from Dr. Veena Rao, Former Secretary to Govt of India with Domain expertise on Malnutrition. I thought will bring some insights into this subject. 

Interesting finding is that relatively small number of states, districts, and villages account for a large share of the burden – 5 states and 50 percent of villages account for about 80% of the malnutrition cases.

According to World Bank - The prevalence of child undernutrition in India is among the highest in the world; nearly double that of Sub-Saharan Africa, with dire consequences for morbidity, mortality, productivity and economic growth.

Yes, this is eye opening that Malnutrition negatively impacts the GDP as it reduces physical/ cognitive growth of an individual by impacting the productivity (earnings of individuals) thus results in economic loss to the nation.

Malnutrition lowers the resistance of the body to infections and capacity to recover from illness and adds to the health costs of the nation. Protein Calorie Intake, Micronutrient Intake, Infections and illness, Nature of Occupation determine working capacity and income generation capacity

According to her research 4% of GDP is lost on account of malnutrition and its various types of manifestations. How? 

• Total no. of households in India= 193,579,954 (Census of India 2001)

• 30% of households =58,073986 consume less than 70% of energy requirements (NNMB Repeat Surveys in 1988-90 and 1996-97)

• Norm level of calorie intake: 2700Kcal

o Actual Calorie Intake: 1890 Kcal (70% of 2700Kcal)

• Energy required for Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR): 1515 Kcal

• Calorie left for productive work: 375 Kcal (1890 Kcal- 1515 Kcal)

• Heavy work requires 219 Kcal per hour.

• Moderate work requires 122 Kcal per hour.

• Work hour lost per day per person due to inadequate calorie consumption: 4 hours of moderate work and 7.5 hours of heavy work

• Calculated on the formula:

Ea X Total No. of days in year (365)

Er X Total No. of working days in year (250)

Ea: is the Energy available for work: 375 Kcal

Er: is the energy required for a particular work: 219 Kcal for heavy work and 122 Kcal for moderate.

• Assuming average household has 5 Consumer Units,(NSS in Nutritional Intake in India, 50th Round,  July 1993: June 1994) then total no. of population consuming less than norm level for calorie intake= 290,369,930

• 55% of Adults= 159,703,461.

• Based on actual average wage of Rs. 60/- per man per day of 8 hours, per hour earning =  Rs. 7.50/- 

• Loss of total money due to low productivity due to inadequate calorie consumption = Rs. 30/- approx. per day per person.

• Total money lost by entire adult population per day= Rs. 4,791,103,830.

• Assuming total of 250 working days, total money lost in a year = Rs. 1,197,775,957,500 = US$ 29,944,398,937 approx. (1 US$= Rs. 40/-) = Approx. US $ 29 Billion

• Total GDP for year 2006-07 = Rs. 28481.57 billion, or US$ 712 billion  

GDP loss = 4% GDP