Anemia, Diet, and Cognitive Development: Impact of Health Information on Diet Quality and Child Nutrition in Rural India

Marion Krämer (), Santosh Kumar () and Sebastian Vollmer
Additional contact information
Marion Krämer: German Institute for Development Evaluation
Santosh Kumar: University of Notre Dame
Authors registered in the RePEc Author Service: Santosh Kumar Gautam

No 14197, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: Lack of information about health risks may limit the adoption of improved nutritional and healthy behavior. This paper studies the effect of a nutrition information intervention on household dietary behavior, hemoglobin levels, and cognitive outcomes of children in rural India. Using experimental data and regression discontinuity design that exploits the exogenous cutoff of hemoglobin level for anemia, we find statistically insignificant treatment effects on dietary improvements, child health, and cognitive outcomes of children. Our findings suggest that light-touch nutrition information alone, even when parents are informed about the health risk of their children, may not promote healthy behavior and factors other than information might constrain households in making nutritional investments for their children.

Keywords: regression discontinuity; cognition; anemia; child health; health information; India (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 55 pages
Date: 2021-03
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dev, nep-exp, nep-hea and nep-neu
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Published - published in: Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 2021,190 (C), 495-523

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp14197.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Anemia, diet, and cognitive development: Impact of health information on diet quality and child nutrition in rural India (2021)
Working Paper: Anemia, diet, and cognitive development: Impact of health information on diet quality and child nutrition in rural India
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:iza:izadps:dp14197

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
IZA, Margard Ody, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Holger Hinte ().