Alan Sánchez

Height in mid childhood and psychosocial competencies in late childhood: Evidence from four developing countries

We use longitudinal data from children growing up in four developing countries (Peru, India, Vietnam, Ethiopia) to study the relationship between height at the age of 7-8 and a set of psychosocial competencies measured at the age of 11-12 that are known to be correlated with earnings during adulthood: self-efficacy, self-esteem and aspirations. Results show that a one standard deviation increase in height-for-age tends to increase self-efficacy, self-esteem and aspirations by 10.4%, 6.4% and 5.1%, respectively. We argue that these findings are likely to be informing of an underlying relationship between undernutrition and the formation of non-cognitive skills.

Early Nutrition and Cognition in Peru

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 percent 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.

The structural relationship between early nutrition, cognitive skills and non-cognitive skills in four developing countries

HighlightsI provide evidence about how skills are acquired during childhood.Early height is found to have an effect on cognitive and non‐cognitive skills.The effect of early height on cognitive skills more than doubles that for non‐cognitive skills.The impact of early height on non‐cognitive skills is indirect. ABSTRACT This study provides evidence about how cognitive and non‐cognitive skills are acquired during childhood in four developing countries (Ethiopia, India, Peru and Vietnam), highlighting the role of early nutrition as a determinant in this process. An increase of one standard deviation in height‐for‐age at the age of 1 is found to have a total effect on cognitive skills at age 8 by 5.4 percent in Ethiopia, 9.0 percent in India, 7.6 percent in Peru and 8.4 percent in Vietnam. The corresponding total effect on non‐cognitive skills is 1.1 percent in Ethiopia, 3.4 percent in India, 2.6 percent in Peru and 1.7 percent in Vietnam. The evidence suggests the effect of early nutrition on non‐cognitive skills is indirect, mediated by cognitive skills. The effect is also relatively small in magnitude.

Psychosocial status and cognitive achievement in Peru

This paper assesses the importance of psychosocial status in the accumulation of cognitive skills during the transition from mid to late childhood. We use longitudinal data from a cohort of 700 Peruvian children drawn from a very rich dataset, the Young Lives Survey, to test the impact of childrens perception of respect at the age of 8 on cognitive achievement 4 years later, controlling for cognitive skills at the age of 8, lagged child and household characteristics, and community fixed effects. This empirical specification is akin to estimating a conditional demand function for cognitive skills, which deals with some of the main pitfalls of skill endogeneity. We find that poorly respected children are linked to a lower rate of cognitive accumulation than their better‐respected counterparts. As expected, we also find that previously accumulated cognitive skills enable higher subsequent cognitive skill accumulation. We go one step further by testing and finding evidence of complementarities across skills. We show that cognitive differences amplify over time between children with low and high psychosocial skills. Overall, our results suggest that psychosocial status, an aspect little studied in the context of developing countries, plays an important role in the acquisition of cognitive skills during childhood.