Purpose <p>To examine whether rotavirus vaccination is associated with better nutritional status among children aged 6–35 months in India.</p> Methods <p>This study used data from the National Family Health Survey–5 (NFHS-5), a nationally representative cross-sectional survey. Child nutritional status was assessed using stunting, wasting, and underweight as outcome indicators. Rotavirus vaccination status was used as the treatment variable. A causal framework based on a Directed Acyclic Graph (DAG) was developed to identify potential confounders and guide covariate selection. Propensity score matching (PSM) was then applied to reduce selection bias and improve comparability between vaccinated and unvaccinated children.</p> Results <p>The study showed that the rotavirus vaccination was associated with lower prevalence of child stunting by 2.2 percentage point (pp) and wasting and underweight by 2.1 pp. Our findings were consistent across different matching techniques, pre-trend analyses, falsification checks, and different sub-sample analyses, with satisfactory covariate balance between comparison groups. The findings indicate that rotavirus vaccination may be associated with improvements in child nutritional outcomes in addition to a reduction in diarrheal cases.</p> Conclusion <p>The findings suggest that rotavirus vaccination is associated with improved nutritional outcomes among children. These findings add to the evidence on the broader benefits of vaccination. Strengthening rotavirus vaccine coverage may help reduce diarrheal disease and improve child health and nutrition. The observed association may be related to reductions in diarrheal morbidity following vaccination; however, this pathway remains hypothetical and warrants further investigation.</p>