Who Benefits from Public Nutrition Programmes? Caste and Region-Based Heterogeneity in the Effectiveness of ICDS in India

DOI

10.2991/978-94-6239-795-8_21How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Integrated Child Development Services; NFHS; Caste; HAZ score; Region; IPW

Abstract

This study examines the differential impact of the Supplementary Nutrition Programme (SNP), delivered under Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) in India, drawing on NFHS-4 (2015-16) and NFHS-5 (2019-21) data for children below age five. Selection bias is addressed through propensity score-based inverse probability weighting, with entropy balancing applied as a robustness check. Adjusting for survey weights, the analysis estimates treatment effects separately across four caste categories (UC, SC, ST, OBC), seven geographic regions, and two age cohorts, distinguishing take-home rations (THR) for children under three years from hot cooked meals (HCM) for those aged three to five. The findings reveal sharp heterogeneity in SNP's impact across both social and geographic lines, with three broad patterns emerging. First, the programme's positive association shifted increasingly toward UC children across rounds, UC children showed no significant effect in NFHS-4 but a significant positive HCM association by NFHS-5, even as marginalised caste groups lost the positive associations they had earlier held. Second, pro-equity effects weakened over time; the one exception holding across both rounds is the positive OBC-THR association observed in Hilly states. Third, the THR component shows a persistent failure to benefit any caste group consistently, in any region, in either survey round, a gap affecting children under 36 months, precisely the window of most critical developmental risk. This failure is not new to NFHS-5; it was already evident in NFHS-4, and its persistence across two survey rounds points to a structural weakness in the delivery mechanism itself.

Copyright

© 2026 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Archana Singh
PY  - 2026
DA  - 2026/10/08
TI  - Who Benefits from Public Nutrition Programmes? Caste and Region-Based Heterogeneity in the Effectiveness of ICDS in India
BT  - Proceedings of the International Conference on Advancing Economics (ICAE): Redefining Growth: Integrating Economy Society and Sustainability for a Resilient Future (ICAE 2026)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 352
EP  - 373
SN  - 2352-5428
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-94-6239-795-8_21
DO  - 10.2991/978-94-6239-795-8_21
ID  - Singh2026
ER  -