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
Authors registered in the RePEc Author Service: Santosh Kumar Gautam

Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 2021, vol. 190, issue C, 495-523

Abstract: Lack of information about health risks may limit the adoption of improved nutrition and other new healthy behaviors. 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 a 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 induce adoption of healthy behaviors. Our findings also imply that factors other than information might constrain households in making nutritional investments for their children.

Keywords: Health information; Child health; Anemia; Cognition; Regression discontinuity; India (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I12 I15 I18 O12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167268121002833
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
Working Paper: 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:eee:jeborg:v:190:y:2021:i:c:p:495-523

DOI: 10.1016/j.jebo.2021.06.043

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization is currently edited by Houser, D. and Puzzello, D.

More articles in Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().