New Delhi ? Despite an economy growing nearly 10 percent a year and steadily declining poverty rates, India has made virtually no progress in cutting widespread malnutrition and battling other key health problems such as anemia, according to a new UNICEF analysis of government figures.

Almost half of Indian children under 3 are underweight, and an Indian child is more likely to be malnourished than a child in Ethiopia, Dr. Marzio Babille, chief of health for the United Nations Children’s Fund in India, said at a news conference Wednesday in New Delhi.

Altogether, 46 percent of Indian children under 3 are underweight, a figure that has shown virtually no improvement since 1998-99, when a previous government census found 47 percent of young children underweight. A third of Indian women also have below-normal body weight, according to the new 2005-06 study, a slight reduction from 36 percent in the previous census, UNICEF officials said.