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
t ratio
Intercept63.38983.2**
Age group: 20-400.376.6**
41-500.193.1**
51-60-0060.8
Age factor chi-square
125.6**
Social group: High caste 1.2130.2**
Superior sudras 0.9320.4**
Inferior sudras 0.244.8**
Tribals0.101.9
Muslims1.0520.1**
Others0.435.9**
Social group factor chi-square 1434.7**
State:Assam-0.528.2**
Bihar-0.419.0**
Gujarat0.112.1*
Haryana1.5917.7**
Himachal Pradesh -0.415.5**
Jammu and Kashmir 0.000.0
Orissa-0.469.6**
Punjab1.5522.8**
Uttar Pradesh 0.6917.1**
State factor chi-square 1793.2**
R^20.107
s2.37
Table 5 - Anthropometric Survey of South India: Male Height Least Squares Regression
Independent variables Regression coefficient
t ratio
Intercept63.50122.8**
Age group: 20-400.180.4
41-500.120.2
51-600.190.3
1.53
Social group: High caste 0.879.6**
Superior Sudras 1.0816.6**
Inferior sudras 0.487.9**
Muslims0.8810.7**
Others0.081.2
Social group factor chi-square 394.7**
State:Andhra Pradesh 0.132.1**
Karnataka0.477.2**
Tamil Nadu 0.020.3
State factor chi-square 79.2**
R^2
0.032
s2.40
