Uncovering the Consequences of Pre-School Malnutrition

Abstract

Researchers involved in Young Lives will have obtained data on the nutritional status of children as pre-schoolers. Subsequent rounds of data collection have generated more information on the human capital of these individuals, including school attainments and measures of cognitive ability such as reading scores and tests of vocabulary. A natural research topic is the exploration of the consequences of preschool nutrition on these outcomes; this work would join the numerous cross-sectional studies that document associations between pre-school nutritional status and subsequent attainments such as schooling and cognitive development. However, it is important to recognize that these are associations, not necessarily causal relationships, because pre-school nutritional status and subsequent attainments both reflect household decisions regarding investments in children’s human capital.

A number of the arguments presented here have benefited from earlier collaborations with Harold Alderman, Jere Behrman and Stefan Dercon and it is a pleasure to acknowledge them here. Errors are my own.