Identifying geospatial patterns in wealth disparity in child malnutrition across 640 districts in India

We assessed district-level geospatial trends in precision weighted prevalence
and absolute wealth disparity in stunting, underweight, wasting, low
birthweight, and anemia among children under five in India. The largest
wealth disparities were found for anthropometric failures and substantial
variation existed across states. We identified statistically significant (p < 0.001)
geospatial patterns in district-wide wealth disparities for all outcomes, which
differed from geospatial patterns for the overall prevalence. We characterized
each district as either a “Disparity”, “Pitfall”, “Intensity”, or “Prosperity” area
based on its overall burden and wealth disparity, as well as discuss the
importance of considering both measures for geographically-targeted public
health interventions to improve health equity.