Early Nutrition and Cognition in Peru: A Within‐Sibling Investigation

  • Date: 31 Aug 2011
  • Series: IDB WORKING PAPER SERIES No. IDB-WP-241
  • Author: Ingo Outes‐Leon, Catherine Porter and Alan Sánchez
  • Download the full text ( English, 689 KB, PDF document )

Summary: This paper examines the causal link between early childhood nutrition and cognition, applying instrumental variables to sibling-differences for a sample of pre-school aged Peruvian children. Child-specific shocks in the form of food price changes and household shocks during the critical developmental period of a child are used as instruments. The analysis shows significant and positive returns to early childhood nutritional investments. An increase in the Height-for-Age z-score of one standard deviation - keeping other factors constant - translates into increases in the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT) score of 17-21 per cent of a standard deviation. The period of analysis includes the recent global food price crisis that also affected Peru between 2006 and 2008. This therefore is also a quantification of the nutritional and subsequent cognitive costs of food prices on the sample, which could be magnified in later years.

We need to end child poverty in order to break the cycle of poverty.