World Bank Poverty and Applied Micro Seminar Series The Sooner the Better But Its Never Too Late: The Impact of Child Growth at Different Stages of Infancy and Childhood on Cognitive Development Presented by Andreas Georgiadis Wednesday, October 2, 2013 Room MC3-570, from 12:30 to 2:00 PM Although growth-promoting interventions focus predominantly on the first 1000 days, there is little persuasive evidence that growth improvements during this period lead to better child developmental outcomes relative to later growth improvements. In this paper we investigate the relative impact of child growth in different periods of infancy and childhood on cognitive achievement at early primary school age using data from the Young Lives study in Ethiopia, India, Peru and Vietnam. Quasi- experimental variation in children’s HAZ scores across periods allows us to address the various endogeneity problems hindering the identification of the causal impact of nutrition across periods on cognitive development. We find that the relative impact of growth on cognitive achievement is highest in the period spanning between age 5 and 8 years in all countries and that the impact of growth in early periods on cognitive achievement consists of two effects: a) a direct effect, that may be negative, suggesting compensatory educational investments by parents of relatively malnourished children and b) an indirect effect that is mediated through improved growth in subsequent periods, that accounts for the larger share of the total effect. Overall our findings suggest, that nutritional interventions that start early in life and continue to subsequent stages of childhood combined with support in other areas such as cognitive stimulation and parental involvement may hold the most promise. The paper will be available at the seminar or by contacting Maribel Flewitt ([email protected])
Posted on: Wed, 25 Sep 2013 19:16:02 +0000