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

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.

Note:
Funding Declaration: This study was funded by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD R21 HD097576) project entitled “Foundational cognitive skills in developing countries: early-life nutritional, climatic and policy determinants and impacts on adolescent education, socio-emotional competencies and risky behaviors.” Thanks also to the UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) for funding Young Lives at Work and enabling this research. The funders had no role in the design, interpretation or writing-up of the study or in the decision to submit the study for consideration for publication.

Conflict of Interests: None to declare.

Ethics Approval: The Institutional Review Board of the University of Pennsylvania approved this project (protocol #834313).

Keywords: foundational cognitive skills, early nutrition, executive functions, Ethiopia, Peru

JEL Classification: I15, I25, J24