Indonesia | Economics

Tuesday, December 11, 2007

Are malnutritioned children doomed forever?

A question a policymaker might ask is whether a person with poor nutritional status when young can recover from the predicament when older. Subha Mani of the University of Southern California (USC) uses the IFLS data to answer this question and come to a heartening conclusion:
[The] dynamic results indicate that there exists catch-up potential in health outcomes, that is, children who suffered from chronic malnutrition during childhood are not likely to remain as undernourished forever. The presence of catch-up potential suggests that focused attempts must be made towards improving nutritional outcomes of children at all ages with special emphasis on the very young.

The disadvantage will still be there. Her model suggests that children with poor nutrition would have had 0.6 less grades of schooling compared to well-nourished ones, but that in the absence of any catch-up effect, the gap would have been four times larger.

You can read the rest of the paper here.

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1 Comments:

  • This is why I feel that doing something for these kids is so important. Here's a site that describes the problem around the world and what can be done: http://maxcast.com/kiwis Here's a site that describes the solution and how you can help! http://jhawkins.my-ntc.com

    Make a difference. Join the Nourish the Children cause today!

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 1/28/2008 06:35:00 pm  

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