Subha Mani

Is there Complete, Partial, or No Recovery from Childhood Malnutrition? – Empirical Evidence from Indonesia

This article uses a dynamic panel data model to identify the impact of early nutritional deficiencies on individuals’ health status in later ages. We find that poor nutrition at young ages causes some, but not severe retardation in the growth of future height indicating partial recovery from chronic malnourishment. The results also indicate that – younger children, stunted children, and children who live in communities with six or more health posts exhibit larger recovery. The estimation strategy used here is especially attractive as it relies on weaker stochastic assumptions compared to earlier work in the literature.

Long-Term Impact of Investments in Early Schooling: Empirical Evidence from Rural Ethiopia

This paper identifies the cumulative impact of early schooling investments on later schooling outcomes in a developing country context using enrollment status and relative grade attainment as short-run and long-run measures of schooling. Using a child-level longitudinal data set from rural Ethiopia, we estimate a dynamic conditional schooling demand function where the coefficient estimate on the lagged dependent variable captures the impact of all previous periods schooling inputs and resources. We find that this lagged dependent variable indicates a strong positive association between current and lagged schooling. Past history matters more for girls than boys and for children from higher income households compared to the poor.

Participation in the Juntos Conditional Cash Transfer Program in Peru Is Associated with Changes in Child Anthropometric Status but Not Language Development or School Achievement

BACKGROUND It is unclear what effects a conditional cash transfer (CCT) program would have on child anthropometry, language development, or school achievement in the context of the nutrition transition experienced by many low- and middle-income countries. OBJECTIVE We estimated the association of participation in Perus Juntos CCT with anthropometry, language development, and school achievement among children aged 7-8 y. METHODS We used data from the Young Lives Study of a cohort born between 2001 and 2002. We estimated associations of the Juntos program with height-for-age z score (HAZ), body mass index-for-age z score (BAZ), stunting, and overweight at age 7-8 y separately for children participating in the program for ≥2 y (n = 169) and children participating for <2 y (n = 188). We then estimated associations with receptive vocabulary and grade achievement among children who had been assessed at age 4-6 y before enrollment in Juntos (n = 243). We identified control subjects using propensity score matching and conducted difference-in-differences comparisons. RESULTS Juntos participation was associated with increases in HAZ among boys participating for ≥2 y [average effect of treatment among the treated (ATT): 0.43; 95% CI: 0.09, 0.77; P = 0.01] and for boys participating for <2 y (ATT: 0.52; 95% CI: 0.23, 0.80; P < 0.01). Among girls participating in the program for ≥2 y, BAZ declined (ATT: -0.60; 95% CI: -1.00, -0.21; P < 0.01) as did the prevalence of overweight (ATT: -22.0 percentage points; 95% CI: -42.5, -2.7 percentage points; P = 0.03). We observed no significant associations of Juntos participation with receptive vocabulary or grade attainment. CONCLUSIONS CCT program participation in Peru was associated with better linear growth among boys and decreased BAZ among girls, highlighting that a large-scale poverty-alleviation intervention may influence anthropometric outcomes in the context of the nutrition transition.

Growth trajectories from conception through middle childhood and cognitive achievement at age 8 years: Evidence from four low- and middle-income countries

Child chronic malnutrition is endemic in low- and middle-income countries and deleterious for child development. Studies investigating the relationship between nutrition at different periods of childhood, as measured by growth in these periods (growth trajectories), and cognitive development have produced mixed evidence. Although an explanation of this has been that different studies use different approaches to model growth trajectories, the differences across approaches are not well understood. Furthermore, little is known about the pathways linking growth trajectories and cognitive achievement. In this paper, we develop and estimate a general path model of the relationship between growth trajectories and cognitive achievement using data on four cohorts from Ethiopia, India, Peru, and Vietnam. The model is used to: (a) compare two of the most common approaches to modelling growth trajectories in the literature, namely the lifecourse plot and the conditional body size model, and (b) investigate the potential channels via which the association between growth in each period and cognitive achievement manifests. We show that the two approaches are expected to produce systematically different results that have distinct interpretations. Results suggest that growth from conception through age 1 year, between age 1 and 5 years, and between 5 and 8 years, are each positively and significantly associated with cognitive achievement at age 8 years and that this may be partly explained by the fact that faster-growing children start school earlier. We also find that a significant share of the association between early growth and later cognitive achievement is mediated through growth in interim periods.

Choosing to Be Trained: Evidence from a Field Experiment

This paper combines unique experimental and survey data to examine the determinants of self-selection into a training program. Women residing in selected disadvantaged areas in New Delhi, India were invited to apply for a six-month long subsidized training program in stitching and tailoring. A random subset of applicants and non-applicants to the training program were invited to participate in an artefactual field experiment and in a detailed socio-economic survey. We find that applicants and non-applicants differ both in terms of socio-economic characteristics (elicited through survey data), and behavioral traits (elicited using a field experiment). Identifying these characteristics can help policy-makers design and promote programs so as to make them more appealing to the target group, and thus improve take-up rates. Our results also suggest that as a methodology, there is valuable information to be gained by dissecting the black box of unobservables using behavioral data from experiments.

Intergenerational Transmission of Poverty and Inequality: Parental Resources and Schooling Attainment and Children’s Human Capital in Ethiopia, India, Peru, and Vietnam

Academic and policy literatures on intergenerational transmissions of poverty and inequality suggest that improving schooling attainment and income for parents in poor households will lessen poverty and inequality in their children’s generation through increased human capital accumulated by their children. However, magnitudes of such effects are unknown. We use data on children born in the twenty-first century in four developing countries to simulate how changes in parents’ schooling attainment and consumption would affect poverty and inequality in both the parents’ and their children’s generations. We find that increasing minimum schooling or income substantially reduces poverty and inequality in the parents’ generation but does not carry over to reducing poverty and inequality substantially in the children’s generation. Therefore, while reductions in poverty and inequality in the parents’ generation are desirable in themselves to improve welfare among current adults, they are not likely to have large impacts in reducing poverty and particularly in reducing inequality in human capital in the next generation.

Explaining Randomized Evaluation Techniques Using Classroom Games

Over the last decade, randomized evaluations have taken the field of development economics by storm. Despite the availability of strong review pieces in the topic, there is no pedagogical paper on randomized evaluation. This paper bridges the gap by introducing three interactive classroom games to communicate the concepts of Average Treatment Effect (ATE), Intent–to-Treat Effect (ITT), Sub-group Average Treatment Effect (SATE), and Externality Effect (EE). The classroom games are easy to implement and provide students an opportunity to participate in a simple randomized trial of their own.