a study by ouyang and pinstrupandersen on health inequality between ethnic minorities and the han populations in china states health and nutrition status in terms of heightforage and weightforage actually improved for both the han group and the minority group but the improvement is much smaller for the minorities and hence the growing health gap another study conducted in china has made similar conclusions and suggested that stunting wasting and being underweight were distinct indicators of the nutritional status of children and chronic growth retardation is the major type of child proteinenergy malnutrition in poor rural minority areas of yunnan province china the country has a small population of indigenous peoples approximately with most concentrated in two provinces in one of the worlds poorest countries with low human development index undp