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 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.
[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.
Labels: economics, health, malnutrition, policy
posted by Arya Gaduh at
8:39 am
|
1 comments
