How Early Nutrition and Foundational Cognitive Skills Interconnect? Evidence from Two Developing Countries

Alan Sanchez, Marta Favara, Margaret Sheridan () and Jere Behrman
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Margaret Sheridan: University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

No 15818, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: While the long-term consequences of early stunting on educational attainment and on school achievement tests are well-known, there is scarce evidence about the specific mechanisms through which early stunting leads to poorer educational outcomes, especially in LMIC contexts. We use unique data collected in Ethiopia and Peru as part of the Young Lives to investigate the relationship between early undernutrition and four foundational cognitive skills, the first two of which measure executive functioning: working memory, inhibitory control, long-term memory, and implicit learning. We exploit the rich longitudinal data available to control for potential confounders at the household level and for time-invariant community characteristics and we use data for paired-siblings to obtain household fixed-effects estimates. We find that stunting is negatively related with the development of executive functions, predicting reductions in working memory and inhibitory control by 12.6% and 5.8% of a standard deviation.

Keywords: foundational cognitive skills; early nutrition; executive functions; Ethiopia; Peru (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I15 I25 J24 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 47 pages
Date: 2022-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dev and nep-neu
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Published - published as 'Does early nutrition predict cognitive skills during later childhood? Evidence from two developing countries' in: World Development , 2024, 176, 106480

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Working Paper: How early nutrition and foundational cognitive skills interconnect? Evidence from two developing countries (2022)
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