Exposure to open defecation can account for the Indian enigma of child height
研究印度儿童比非洲更贫困地区儿童更矮的“亚洲谜团”，提出并量化验证了卫生设施差异（尤其是露天排便的人口密度）是重要原因，通过反事实模拟发现改善卫生可消除身高差距。
Physical height is an important measure of human capital. However, differences in average height across developing countries are poorly explained by economic differences. Children in India are shorter than poorer children in Africa, a widely studied puzzle called "the Asian enigma." This paper proposes and quantitatively investigates the hypothesis that differences in sanitation - and especially in the population density of open defecation - can statistically account for an important component of the Asian enigma, India's gap relative to sub-Saharan Africa. The paper's main result computes a demographic projection of the increase in the average height of Indian children, if they were counterfactually exposed to sub-Saharan African sanitation, using a non-parametric reweighting method. India's projected increase in mean height is at least as large as the gap. The analysis also critically reviews evidence from recent estimates in the literature. Two possible mechanisms are effects on children and on their mothers.