Grand Challenges Canada Economic Returns To Mitigating Early Life Risks Project Working Paper Series

Team1000+ is a consortium that combines the expertise and complementarities of groups of research scholars from the University of Pennsylvania (Penn)-USA (PI Jere R. Behrman), University of Essex-UK (PI Sonia Bhalotra) and CDDEP-India (PI Ramanan Laxminarayan) into an international interdisciplinary consortium of leading scholars with considerable expertise on many facets of both determinants and impacts of early childhood development (ECD). The lead institution for Team1000+ Project is Penn, with the project being coordinated by the Penn Population Studies Center (PSC) and with Behrman as PI, in partnership with the two consortium members (Essex, CDDEP). Team1000+ includes over 50 investigators with advanced training in economics and 11 other relevant disciplines; current appointments in 17 countries, including 13 low- and middle-income countries; and current or recent appointments in a number of international governmental organizations, international NGOs, governments and universities. Team1000+ is developing an economic framework to address four critical poverty-related risk factors during the First 1000 Days of life highlighted by the GCC -- malnutrition, infection, poor management of pregnancy and birth complications, and a lack of cognitive stimulation and nurturing – and analyze the economic impacts and the resource costs of selected related interventions over the life cycle. Team1000+ is undertaking an innovative strategy with a number of components to move considerably beyond the existing literature to develop significantly improved understanding. The project purpose is to contribute significantly to understanding the economic impact of ameliorating key risk factors in the First 1000 Days in developing countries through synthesizing available knowledge and contributing new innovative studies. The potential impact in terms of knowledge on this important topic is great, both directly on policy makers and indirectly through the influence of the nongovernmental and academic communities on policy. Papers in this working paper series are products written by members of Team1000+.

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  • Publication
    The Persistent Effects of in Utero Nutrition Shocks Over the Life Cycle: Evidence From Ramadan Fasting
    (2013-08-07) Majid, Muhammad Farhan
    This paper uses longitudinal data (the Indonesian Family Life Survey) to study the persistent effects of in utero exposure to Ramadan over the life cycle. The exposed children have lower birth weights, study fewer hours during elementary school, do more child labor, score 7.8 percent lower on cognitive tests and 5.9 percent lower on math test scores. As adults, the exposed children work 4.5 percent fewer hours and are more likely to be self-employed. Estimates are robust to the inclusion of biological sibling fixed effects. Moreover, results are strongest for religious Muslim families, while insignificant for non-Muslims.
  • Publication
    The Economic Rationale for Investing in Stunting Reduction
    (2013-09-15) Hoddinott, John; Alderman, Harold; Behrman, Jere R.; Haddad, Lawrence; Horton, Susan
    This paper outlines the economic rationale for investments that reduce stunting. We present a framework that illustrates the functional consequences of stunting in the 1000 days after conception throughout the life cycle: from childhood through to old age. We summarize the key empirical literature around each of the links in the life cycle, highlighting gaps in knowledge where they exist. We construct credible estimates of benefit-cost ratios for a plausible set of nutritional interventions to reduce stunting. There are considerable challenges in doing so that we document. We assume an uplift in income of 11 percent due to the prevention of one fifth of stunting and a 5% discount rate of future benefit streams. Our estimates of the country-specific benefit: cost ratios for investments that reduce stunting in 17 high-burden countries range from 3.6 (DRC) to 48 (Indonesia) with a median value of 18(Bangladesh). Mindful that these results hinge on a number of assumptions, they compare favourably with other investments for which public funds compete.
  • Publication
    Height and Calories in Early Childhood
    (2014-07-23) Griffen, Andrew S.
    This paper estimates a height production function using data from a randomized nutrition intervention conducted in rural Guatemala from 1969 - 1977. Using the experimental intervention as an instrument, the IV estimates of the effect of calories on height are an order of magnitude larger than the OLS estimates. Information from a unique measurement error process in the calorie data, counterfactuals results from the estimated model and external evidence from migration studies suggest that the divergence between the OLS and IV estimates is driven by the LATE interpretation of IV. Attenuation bias corrected OLS estimates of the height production function imply that calories gaps in early childhood can explain at most 16% of the height gap between Guatemalan children and the US born children of Guatemalan immigrants.
  • Publication
    The Role of Maternal Education in Child Health: Evidence from a Compulsory Schooling Law
    (2013-09-24) Güneş, Pınar Mine
    This paper explores the effect of maternal education on child health and the channels in which education operates by exploiting a change in the compulsory schooling law (CSL) in Turkey. In order to account for the endogeneity of education, variation in the exposure to the CSL across cohorts induced by the timing of the policy is used as an instrumental variable. The results indicate that mother’s primary school completion improves infant health, as measured by very low birth weight, and child health, as measured by height-for-age and weight-for-age z-scores, even after controlling for many potential confounding factors. This paper also demonstrates that mother’s primary school completion leads to earlier preventive care initiation and reduces smoking.
  • Publication
    Mothers’ Empowerment, Children’s Inoculations and Schooling in Pakistan: Urban vs Rural Areas, Daughters vs Sons and 1998-99 vs 2007-08
    (2013-08-12) Kiani, Adiqa K.; Behrman, Jere R.
    Mothers’ empowerment is thought to have considerable impact on children’s health and schooling. But the evidence for developing countries of the magnitudes of such effects, how they differ between urban and rural areas, whether they differ for daughters versus sons and whether they are changing over time is limited, particularly for countries that are characterized as having relatively great gender inequality. We construct a mothers’ empowerment index from Pakistani household survey data for 1998-99 and 2007-08 and investigate the associations between mothers’ empowerment and children’s inoculations and schooling. Because mothers’ empowerment may be endogenous, we explore instrumental variable estimates using women’s ages at the time of marriage as the identifying instrument. We find that the greater mothers’ empowerment: the more likely that preschool-age children have complete inoculations and the younger is the age of starting school and the greater is the schooling progression rate. These effects are larger in absolute magnitude for urban than for rural areas (though significantly so at the 5% level only for inoculations), suggesting that the urban context facilitates the effectiveness of mothers’ empowerment on investments in children’s human capital. They also are larger in absolute magnitude for daughters than for sons (though significantly so only for the schooling progression rate), suggesting some intergenerational own-gender reinforcement. Finally, these effects are significantly larger in absolute magnitudes for 2007-08 than for 1998-99, suggesting increased impact of a given degree of mothers’ empowerment in the first decade of the 21st century.
  • Publication
    Math Skills and Market and Non-market Outcomes: Evidence From an Amazonian Society
    (2013-01-01) Undurraga, Eduardo A.; Behrman, Jere R.; Grigorenko, Elena L.; Schultz, Alan; Yiu, Julie; Godoy, Ricardo A.
    Research in industrial nations suggests that formal math skills are associated with improvements in market and non-market outcomes. But do these associations also hold in a highly autarkic setting with a limited formal labor market? We examined this question using observational annual panel data (2008 and 2009) from 1,121 adults in a native Amazonian society of forager-farmers in Bolivia (Tsimane’). Formal math skills were associated with an increase in wealth in durable market goods and in total wealth between data collection rounds, and with improved indicators of own reported mental health and child health. These associations did not vary significantly by people’s Spanish skills or proximity to town. We conclude that the positive association between math skills and market and non-market outcomes extends beyond industrial nations to even highly autarkic settings.
  • Publication
    Intergenerational Transmission of Poverty and Inequality: Young Lives
    (2013-06-30) Behrman, Jere R.; Crookston, Benjamin T.; Dearden, Kirk; Duc, Le Thuc; Fernald, Lia C. H.; Mani, Subha; Stein, Aryeh D.; Schott, Whitney
    Parents play major roles in determining the human capital of children, and thus the income of children when they become adults. Models of investments in children’s human capital posit that these investments are determined by parental resources (financial and human capital) and child endowments within particular market and policy environments. Many empirical studies are consistent with significant associations between parental resources and investments in their children. And there is considerable emphasis in the scholarly and the policy literatures on the degree of intergenerational mobility and the intergenerational transmission of economic opportunities, and therefore the intergenerational transmission of poverty – or of affluence. Therefore policies or other developments that affect the extent of poverty and/or inequality in the parents’ generation are likely to have impacts on the extent of poverty and/or inequality in the children’s generation. However the extent of these intergenerational effects is an empirical question that this paper explores using the Young Lives data to estimate intergenerational associations between parental resources and investments in human capital of children and then, under the assumption that these associations reflect causal effects, to simulate what impacts changes in poverty and inequality in the parents’ generation have on poverty and inequality in the children’s generation. The results suggest that reductions in poverty and in inequality in the parents’ generation reduce poverty and inequality in the children’s generation some, but not much.
  • Publication
    What Determines Adult Cognitive Skills? Influences of Pre-Schooling, Schooling, and Post-Schooling Experiences in Guatemala
    (2013-06-19) Behrman, Jere R.; Hoddinott, John F.; Maluccio, John A.; Soler-Hampejsek, Erica; Behrman, Emily L.; Martorell, Reynaldo; Ramirez-Zea, Manuel; Stein, Aryeh D.
    Most empirical investigations of the effects of cognitive skills assume that they are produced by schooling, and that schooling is exogenous. Drawing on a rich longitudinal data set to estimate production functions for adult reading-comprehension cognitive skills and adult nonverbal cognitive skills, we find that (1) Schooling attainment has a significant and substantial effect on adult reading-comprehension cognitive skills but not on adult nonverbal cognitive skills; and (2) Pre-schooling and post-schooling experiences have substantial positive significant effects on adult cognitive skills. Pre-schooling experiences that increase height for age at age six years substantially and significantly increase adult reading-comprehension and nonverbal cognitive skills, even after controlling for schooling attainment and post-school skilled job tenure. Post-schooling tenure in skilled jobs also has a significant positive effect on adult reading-comprehension and nonverbal cognitive skills, although the latter estimate is sensitive to how we treat gender. Age also has significant positive effect but with diminishing returns on adult reading-comprehension cognitive skills. The findings (1) reinforce the importance of early life investments; (2) support the importance of childhood nutrition (“Flynn effect”) and work complexity in explaining increases in cognitive skills; (3) question interpretations of studies reporting productivity impacts of cognitive skills without controlling for endogeneity; and (4) point to limitations in using adult schooling alone to represent human capital.
  • Publication
    Intergenerational Effects of Maternal Exposure to Drought in Utero on Newborn Size: Evidence from a Retrospective Cohort Study in Malawi
    (2018-04-16) Hanjahanja-Phiri, Thokozani
    Aims: First, the study first assessed the impact of maternal exposure to drought in utero on newborn size. Second, the study assessed the effect of prenatal supplementation in offsetting the negative intergenerational effects of maternal exposure to drought in utero on newborn size. Methods: The present study took advantage of a natural experiment from three droughts (1981/82, 1987/88, and 1992/93) of varying severity in rural Malawi to derive maternal exposure to drought in utero based on maternal date of birth. Other data for outcomes and control variables were sourced from the iLiNS-DYAD-M randomized clinical trial. Results: Among infants of mothers exposed to drought in the first trimester, non-significant effects on infant length-for-age Z score (LAZ) were observed for prenatal supplementation with small-quantity, lipid-based nutrient supplements (SQ-LNS) on infant LAZ compared to the iron-folic acid (IFA), controlling for the study covariates. However, prenatal supplementation with multiple micronutrients (MMN) compared to IFA produced significant effects on infant LAZ [-0.853 SD, 95% CI (-1.446: -0.259)]. Conclusions: These findings suggest that prenatal supplementation with SQ-LNS vs IFA or significantly with MMN vs IFA may sometimes not be beneficial for birth outcomes due to intergenerational external shocks in resource-poor, drought-prone settings.
  • Publication
    Review of Maternal Effects on Early Childhood Stunting
    (2014-08-02) Phiri, Thokozani