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Patel and Pradhan

Table 2. Urbanicity scale characteristics for 40 million-plus cities in India in 2011.
Range 15.880
Minimum 45.589
Maximum 61.469
Mean 52.477
Standard deviation 4.043
Item variance 6.392
Sample variance 16.347
Cronbach’s alpha 0.638
Count 40

in Tables 1 and 2. It is worth mentioning that all the different kinds of parameters used for the calculation of the urbanicity
scale and the respective scores of the 40 million-plus cities are available in Appendix Table 1A and 2A.

2.2.2. Measurement of selected environmental indicators
The Air Quality Index (AQI) is an index for reporting air quality and tells the health effects one can experience after
breathing the polluted air. The index is calculated by transforming the weighted values of individual air pollution-related
parameters (e.g., SO , CO, visibility, etc.) into a single number or set of numbers (Central Pollution Control Board, 2014).
2
The index has six categories, i.e., (i) good: 0-50, (ii) satisfactory: 51-100, (iii) moderately polluted: 101-200, (iv) poor:
201-300, (v) very poor: 301-400, and (vi) severe: >401. This study used the available AQI by Central Pollution Control
Board for the year 2016, and PM2.5 (diameter of <2.5 mm) and PM10 (diameters 10 or <10 mm) were adopted from
the published report of the WHO Global Ambient Air Quality Database (2018). In addition, information on temperature
and rainfall during 1901-2000 in selected cities, available on the Government of India website, was used to assess the
changing climatic condition and its possible effects on health and environment.
2.2.3. Measurement of selected health indicators
To assess the health status of children residing in selected million-plus cities under study, we used the data from the
representative National Family Health Survey (NFHS)–4, 2015-2016. We estimated the children’s nutritional conditions
in terms of stunted (short for their age), wasted (thin for their height), and underweight (thin for their age). The proportion
of children 0-59 months of age who have their height-for-age two standard deviations below the WHO (WHO, 2006)
growth reference (HAZ <−2) was considered as short for their age. Similarly, the proportion of children 0-59 months
of age whose weight-for-height and weight-for-age were two standard deviations below the WHO growth reference
was considered as wasted and underweight, respectively. In addition, the information on the acute respiratory infection
(ARI) for children under age 5 years in the past 2 weeks preceding the survey was used. The ARI symptoms consist of
cough accompanied by (1) short, rapid breathing that is chest related, and/or (2) difficult breathing that is chest related.

2.3. Data Analysis

Statistical Softwares such as STATA (V16) and MS Excel were used for data analysis. Specifically, the NFHS-4 data
were analyzed through STATA and the census data were analyzed in MS Excel. Again, GeoDa software was used for
generating the cartographic maps.

2.4. Ethical Consideration

The study used the secondary data available in the public domain for larger use by researchers and policymakers and
hence any ethical approval was not sought for this study.

3. Results

3.1. AQI in Selected Million-plus Cities, 2016

Table 3 shows the AQI and the particulate matter (PM) measurements for the selected million-plus cities of India.
A lower AQI value means better air quality, whereas a higher AQI value means worse air quality. For the year

International Journal of Population Studies | 2020, Volume 6, Issue 1 19