Nutrition As Economic Infrastructure
A small rise in calorie intake can lift wages and productivity, making nutrition one of India’s highest-return public investments.
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Kaushalendra Kumar, International Institute for Population Sciences (IIPS)
Ashish Singh, IIT Bombay
Santosh Kumar Gautam, Keough School of Global Affairs at the University of Notre Dame, USA
Abhishek Singh, International Institute for Population Sciences (IIPS)
SDG 2: Zero Hunger | SDG 3: Good Health and Well-Being | SDG 8: Decent Work and Economic Growth
Institutions: Ministry of Health and Family Welfare | Ministry of Labour and Employment | Ministry of Rural Development
India’s economy runs on over 640 million workers. Yet many remain undernourished. Few policy levers promise higher returns than improving nutrition. A 10 percent rise in calorie intake can increase wages by about 2.5 percent, and nearly 3 percent among the poorest third of workers. Food fuels productivity, but policy still treats it as welfare, not investment.
The Hidden Engine of Growth
Economic debates tend to revolve around skills, capital, and infrastructure. These are essential, but they all rest on a simpler foundation – the body’s and mind’s capacity to work, learn, and persist. Nutrition underpins that capacity. Without it, even the best-designed education or employment programme delivers diminishing returns. Undernourished workers tire sooner, fall ill more often and lose productive hours each day The drag is quiet but constant.
Data from the National Sample Survey confirm the link: higher calorie intake is associated with higher daily wages across occupations and regions. Nutrition, in other words, is a factor of production. Yet beyond basic caloric needs, further gains come from diet quality – not quantity. That matters because in last two decades, 2004-05 to 2023-24, India’s average calorie intake has increased by only 10 percent whereas real incomes have risen by around three times. Growth alone, it turns out, does not nourish.
Nutrition as an Equaliser
Workers at the bottom of the wage ladder, whose diets are most inadequate, record the largest income increases when calorie intake rises. Nutrition, thus, acts as a quiet equaliser: it lifts productivity precisely where deprivation holds it down. For India, this offers a rare alignment between moral and economic logic. Rural and informal-sector workers consume fewer calories and earn less. Many earn too little to afford a balanced diet, even when employed. Women face an additional disadvantage – their calorie–wage link is slightly weaker, reflecting both lower baseline nutrition and unequal access within households. The cost of that inequity is seldom measured, yet it multiplies across generations: when women eat last, the nation’s human capital eats last too.
The Economics of Nourishment
The economics are compelling. The wage gains from higher calorie intake outweigh the cost of extra food by two to three times. Even modest increases in food spending for low-income workers can generate earnings that more than pay for themselves.
Scaled up, this becomes a self-reinforcing cycle: healthier diets lift incomes, which in turn finance better diets. When public policy accelerates this loop, the payoff extends far beyond households – in higher productivity, stronger consumption, and greater tax revenue. Feeding the workforce better is not compassion. It is an economic strategy.
Yet calories alone are not enough. A diet rich in grains but poor in protein, vitamins, and minerals may fill stomachs while leaving people undernourished. Micronutrients such as iron and zinc sustain focus, strength, and immunity - all vital for consistent work performance. Without them, extra calories bring limited benefit. A construction worker who eats plenty of rice but lacks iron will tire easily; a teacher who meets her energy needs through bread and tea may still struggle to concentrate. Dietary diversity, not just calorie adequacy, is what turns food into human capital.
From Feeding People to Fuelling Policy
India already spends heavily on food security through the Public Distribution System, school meals, and national nutrition missions. These have achieved much, yet they remain detached from labour and productivity policy. Seeing nutrition as an economic input could change that.
Employment and skills programmes could integrate food and health components to strengthen outcomes – for instance, nutritious mid-day meals under rural job schemes or employer-run canteens in industrial zones to curb absenteeism and improve retention. The next step is to target interventions where returns are highest through balanced meals, food vouchers, or partnerships for fortified foods. What matters most is the shift in mindset – from feeding to empower, not merely to sustain
Private firms also have a clear stake in this shift. Well-fed employees are more focused, fall ill less often, and stay longer in their jobs. In most sectors, the cost of a healthy meal per worker is negligible compared with the productivity loss from fatigue or illness.
Aligning Nutrition with Growth Policy
Reframing nutrition as economic infrastructure helps bridge a long-standing divide in policy – between welfare and growth. For decades, the two have been treated as opposites: one redistributive, the other productive. In reality, nutrition unites them. It improves equity while raising efficiency. The same rupee spent on better diets can cut poverty and expand output at once. Few investments offer such twin returns.
It also changes how we think about human capital. Education and training supply skills; nutrition enables their use. As India’s working-age population peaks, translating that demographic advantage into real productivity will depend as much on nourishment as on schooling or jobs.
Nutrition’s strength lies in its quiet universality. It cuts across sectors – from agriculture and health to labour and finance – and its benefits accumulate over generations. Recognising that the intergenerational dividend is essential for long-term growth planning. Realising it will require coordination among ministries that have long worked in silos. Health, labour, and food policy must align around a common objective: workforce nutrition. Coherence, more than new spending, will deliver results. Food subsidies should reward diversity, not just cereal volume. Employment and welfare schemes must treat nutrition as a central pillar, not incidental. Public–private partnerships can widen access to fortified foods and balanced diets. Above all, policymakers must begin to see nutrition as part of the growth equation, not apart from it.
Feeding Growth, Building Futures
India’s path to sustained, inclusive growth will depend less on headline reforms than on the daily resilience of its workforce. That resilience begins with what people eat. Nutrition is not a soft sector but the hard core of economic capacity – and treating it as such may decide whether India’s growth endures or exhausts itself.
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Authors:
The discussion in this article is based on the authors’ research published in Economic Modelling (Volume 152). Views are personal.