In India, there is a considerable disparity between rural and urban areas with respect to health facilities, education, and infrastructural facilities. The major objectives of the present study are to examine the magnitudes of rural–urban disparity, its variation across states, and reasons for such disparity.

A total of 81,712 ever-married women of reproductive age from 26 states in India constitute the data set. BMI is considered to be a good measure of Chronic Energy Deficiency (CED) and obesity. Some socio-economic variables were also considered that are known to affect nutritional status.

For each state, the place-of-residence-wise classification was done. To determine the relationship between CED of women by rural and urban differences with different socio-economic variables, the percentage of urban CED women was subtracted from that of rural CED women. Thus, a positive sign means rural women are more affected than urban women. Correlation coefficients and Chi-square analyses were performed to establish relationship between dependant (nutritional status) and independent (socio-economic) variables.

Key findings suggest disparity in nutritional status of adult women of reproductive age in 26 states between rural–urban areas in India. It was found that the magnitude of difference varies across the states. A noteworthy finding is that more developed states have less and most of the less developed states have more rural-urban differences. Rural-urban difference of the north-east states are low due to many factors including factors leading to higher empowerment of women compared to other states in India.