Both cognitive and non-cognitive skills matter to understand a child's opportunities and outcomes in adulthood. However, it is unclear how non-cognitive skills are produced and what the role played by household investments is in this process. Motivated by suggestions from the medical literature and by the skills formation model proposed by Cunha and Heckman (2007, 2008), in this paper we use longitudinal data from children growing up in developing country contexts to study the role of early nutritional history in shaping these skills.

We use data on children at ages 8, 12 and 15 from Young Lives, a cohort study of 12,000 children across Ethiopia, India (Andhra Pradesh), Peru and Vietnam, to document the presence of a gender gap across a wide variety of indicators, including nutrition, education, aspirations, subjective well-being and psychosocial competencies. First, we find that there is considerable heterogeneity across countries, ages and indicators in whether there is any gender bias and whether it is in favour of boys or girls.