Recent trends in the condition of children in India: A statistical profile

Global recession has not affected the status of Indian children directly, thanks to the basic insularity of the country's economy, but it has constrained the government's ability to maintain/expand child-related programmes in real terms. This paper analyses recent trends in a large set of quality of life indicators for children in India. While labour market data and nutrition statistics appear ambiguous, other measures such as anthropometric measures, e.g. infant mortality, life expectancy and literacy rates, do not show generalized deterioration and occasionally provide evidence of improvements. The latter, however, show important inter-state variations, with conditions actually deteriorating in some states. Moreover, the improvements observed have been registered under very low absolute conditions of living.