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According to the latest study, published in the renowned journal Lancet, about 97 million underweight children lived in India in 2016. New findings reveal that, in 2016, India had the highest population of "moderate-to-severely" underweight children and young adults aged between 5-to-19 years in the past four decades. However, there was a decline in the number of underweight children from 24.4 per cent of girls and 39.3 per cent of boys in 1975 to 22.7 per cent and 30.7 per cent in 2016 respectively. For the study, the team analysed weight and height measurements from nearly 130 million people aged over 5 (31.5 million people aged five to 19, and 97.4 million aged 20 and older) from 1975 to 2016. An estimated 192 million children were found to be moderately or severely underweight worldwide in 2016. Being underweight has been associated with a higher risk of infectious diseases.