Skip to main content
Home
  • Data & Research
  • Publications
  • Findings & Impact
  • Search

  • Themes
  • Blog
  • About
  • Young Lives News & Events
  • People
  • Countries

Home+
Themes+
Poverty & Inequality+
Inequality
Migration and mobility
Poverty and shocks
Social protection
Well-being and aspirations
Health & Nutrition+
Early childhood development
Malnutrition and cognitive development
Stunting and catch-up growth
Water and Sanitation
Education+
Early education
Low-fee private schooling
Low-fee private schooling
School effectiveness
Adolescence, Youth and Gender+
Gender
Marriage and parenthood
Child protection+
Children's work
Early marriage and FGM
Violence
Skills & Work
Blog
About
Young Lives News & Events+
Events
Past events
Media coverage
Our Research Films
Galleries
People+
Young Lives Associates
International Advisory Board
Research Partners
Countries

You are here

  • Home
  • Home
  • Publications
  • The Sooner The Better But It’s Never Too Late: The Impact of Nutrition at Different Periods of Childhood on Cognitive Development

Publications

  • The Sooner The Better But It’s Never Too Late: The Impact of Nutrition at Different Periods of Childhood on Cognitive Development

Share

 
Tweet
Email

The Sooner The Better But It’s Never Too Late: The Impact of Nutrition at Different Periods of Childhood on Cognitive Development

January, 2017
Andreas Georgiadis
  • Health & Nutrition
  • Stunting and catch-up growth
Young Lives Working Paper 159, January 2017
PDF icon YL-WP159-Georgiadis (2).pdf

Preview

Although it has been argued that undernutrition and its consequences for child development are irreversible after the age of 2, the evidence in support of these hypotheses is inconclusive. This working paper investigates the impact of nutrition at different periods from conception to middle childhood on cognitive achievement in early adolescence using data from Ethiopia, India, Peru, and Vietnam. In order to address estimation problems the paper develops a conceptual framework that delineates the channels through which child health impacts cognitive development and uses exogenous variation in nutritional status arising from weather shocks.  

Results suggest that child growth both before and after the first 1,000 days is responsive to weather shocks and impacts cognitive achievement in early adolescence. The research also finds that part of the effect of early growth on later cognitive achievement manifests through growth in interim periods. Another novel result is that parental investment responses to a change in child health depend on the timing of this change.

These findings have important policy implications. On the one hand, results indicate that nutrition early in life is important for physical growth and cognitive development in subsequent stages of childhood, but on the other hand they suggest that nutrition-promoting investments after infancy and early childhood can act as a remedy for early nutrition and cognitive deficits and protect from nutritional insults in later stages that may also lead to developmental setbacks. Overall, the evidence suggests that nutrition-promoting interventions that start early in life and continue to subsequent stages of childhood, combined with support in other areas such as cognitive stimulation and parental involvement, may hold the most promise for the promotion of child development.

About

Our people
Our funders
Our research
Contact Young Lives

Newsletter signup

Where we work

  • Ethiopia
  • India
  • Peru
  • Vietnam

Our themes

  • Poverty & Inequality
  • Health & Nutrition
  • Education
  • Gender & Youth
  • Child Protection
  • Skills & Work

Oxford Department of  International Development (ODID)
University of Oxford,  Queen Elizabeth House
3 Mansfield Road, Oxford, OX1 3TB, UK

Copyright 2021 Young Lives
|Privacy policy|Accessibility Statement|Sitemap