The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has just offered further evidence that American children — and rural children in particular — are in trouble. Previously, the CDC had noted that poor U.S. children 2 to 8 years of age have higher rates of parent-reported mental, behavioral, and developmental disorders (MBDDs) than their wealthier counterparts. Now, in the latest of a series of reports, the agency documents the finding that rural children from small communities are more likely to have MBDDs than those living in cities and suburbs.

There is an increasing importance of landowning households that do not cultivate and a significant presence of urban households owning rural land, which constrains the growth of the agrarian economy, as such households have low incentives to invest in agriculture, and tend to use land for residential purposes, reducing the cropped area. Agricultural labour households tend to lease in land and become cultivators.

Why does data about increasing rural consumption shock us? Urban imagination sees the rural as a static, timeless domain where people are bare-minimalists lacking in ambition, agency or entrepreneurship. However, even if agriculture is declining, the rural isn’t. The rural is getting reconstituted amidst this confusion with ambivalent trends.

Using the latest National Sample Survey Office data on land distribution and use, questions of agrarian change in India are revisited. With reducing landholding size in general, the increasing unviability of such small plots, and increasing numbers of "effectively" landless households, the larger questions of employment and sectoral shifts are flagged. There is still no clear transition away from agriculture.

Metabolic syndrome is prevalent worldwide and its prevalence is related to physical activity, race, and lifestyle. Little data is available for people living in rural areas of China. In this study we examined associations of physical activity and sedentary behaviors with metabolic syndrome components among people in rural China. 

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This paper contributes to the ongoing debate about economic inequality in India during the post-reform period. It analyses consumption inequality through the hitherto neglected lens of non-food expenditure. Using household level consumption expenditure data from the quinquennial "thick" rounds of the National Sample Survey, the paper shows that inequality within food and non-food groups has declined, even as overall expenditure inequality has increased over time.

External gamma dose rate measurement using thermoluminescent dosimeter has been performed along the southern coast of Odisha, eastern India. A total of nine villages from the three sectors, viz. Gopalpur, Chhatrapur and Rushikulya have been selected for the study.

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