In the comments to my post, Why brown people are midgets, a reader pointed me to this paper, which tabulates and analyzes some data from the 1960s for males. There isn’t anything too surprising in the data set; Punjabis are tall compared to non-Punjabis, higher castes are taller than lower castes. There is a lot of unaccounted for variation. This was before Indian Shining, and the Green Revolution probably hadn’t sunk in yet (I wouldn’t be surprised if the between-state differences increased, while the between-caste differences decreased, in the past 40 years). So appropriate caveats. The one surprising thing is that being a Muslim was a variable that predicted more height! This is correcting for regional distribution. The reason it’s surprising is that Muslims are genetically no different from non-Muslims (e.g., in Uttar Pradesh the highest proportion of recent West Asian ancestry is 5% across the whole population) and tend to socially disadvantaged in India (i.e., they are a Backward Class). The only explanation I have is that Muslims are less likely to be vegetarian or have dietary taboos which constrain their nutritional choices. Tables below the fold….
* p-value at 0.05
** p-value at 0.01
Table 4 – Anthnropometric Survey of North India: Male Height Least Squares Regression | |||
Independent variables | Regression coefficient | t ratio | |
Intercept | 63.38 | 983.2** | |
Age group: | 20-40 | 0.37 | 6.6** |
41-50 | 0.19 | 3.1** | |
51-60 | -006 | 0.8 | |
Age factor chi-square | 125.6** | ||
Social group: | High caste | 1.21 | 30.2** |
Superior sudras | 0.93 | 20.4** | |
Inferior sudras | 0.24 | 4.8** | |
Tribals | 0.10 | 1.9 | |
Muslims | 1.05 | 20.1** | |
Others | 0.43 | 5.9** | |
Social group factor chi-square | 1434.7** | ||
State: | Assam | -0.52 | 8.2** |
Bihar | -0.41 | 9.0** | |
Gujarat | 0.11 | 2.1* | |
Haryana | 1.59 | 17.7** | |
Himachal Pradesh | -0.41 | 5.5** | |
Jammu and Kashmir | 0.00 | 0.0 | |
Orissa | -0.46 | 9.6** | |
Punjab | 1.55 | 22.8** | |
Uttar Pradesh | 0.69 | 17.1** | |
State factor chi-square | 1793.2** | ||
R2 | 0.107 | ||
s | 2.37 |
Table 5 – Anthropometric Survey of South India: Male Height Least Squares Regression | |||
Independent variables | Regression coefficient | t ratio | |
Intercept | 63.50 | 122.8** | |
Age group: | 20-40 | 0.18 | 0.4 |
41-50 | 0.12 | 0.2 | |
51-60 | 0.19 | 0.3 | |
1.53 | |||
Social group: | High caste | 0.87 | 9.6** |
Superior Sudras | 1.08 | 16.6** | |
Inferior sudras | 0.48 | 7.9** | |
Muslims | 0.88 | 10.7** | |
Others | 0.08 | 1.2 | |
Social group factor chi-square | 394.7** | ||
State: | Andhra Pradesh | 0.13 | 2.1** |
Karnataka | 0.47 | 7.2** | |
Tamil Nadu | 0.02 | 0.3 | |
State factor chi-square | 79.2** | ||
R2 | 0.032 | ||
s | 2.40 |
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