A Bit of Salt, A Trace of Life: Gender Norms and The Impact of a Salt Iodization Program on Human Capital Formation of School Aged Children

Zichen Deng () and Maarten Lindeboom ()
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Zichen Deng: Norwegian School of Economics
Maarten Lindeboom: Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam

No 2021-01, Working Papers from Centre for Health Economics, Monash University

Abstract: This paper examines the effects of a massive salt iodization program on human capital formation of school-aged children in China. Exploiting province and time variation, we find a strong positive impact on cognition for girls and no effects for boys. For non-cognitive skills, we find the opposite. We show in a simple model of parental investment that gender preferences can explain our findings. Analyses exploiting within the province, village-level variation in gender attitudes confirm the importance of parental gender preferences. Consequently, large scale programs can have positive (and possibly) unintended effects on gender equality in societies with son preference.

Keywords: Iodine; parental investments; gender attitudes; cognitive skills; non-cognitive skills (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I15 J16 J24 O15 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dev, nep-isf and nep-neu
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