Early-Childhood Growth Faltering, Post-Infancy Recovery and Educational Outcomes in Late Childhood: Evidence from Vietnam
Penn collection
Degree type
Discipline
Subject
Cognitive Achievement
Early-Life Growth Failure
Stunting
Catch-Up Growth
Vietnam
Behavioral Economics
Demography, Population, and Ecology
Economics
Growth and Development
Health Economics
Human and Clinical Nutrition
International and Community Nutrition
Maternal and Child Health
Nutrition
Nutritional Epidemiology
Public Health
Public Health Education and Promotion
Sociology
Funder
Grant number
License
Copyright date
Distributor
Related resources
Contributor
Abstract
We use longitudinal data on over 1,500 children born in 2001 in Vietnam to study the impact of early childhood stunting on height, lagging in schooling progression and cognitive outcomes in late childhood (age 8-10 years). Our preferred estimates utilize 2SLS estimators to control for the endogenous determination of early childhood stunting and also include control for child sex and birth order, mother’s height and BMI, household socioeconomic status, and community characteristics. These estimates indicate that deficits in height-for-age at age 12 months have negative impacts on height in late childhood but not on schooling and cognitive outcomes in late childhood. The children who were stunted or moderately stunted at age 12 months display significant catch-up growth, recovering half of their deficits in height-for-age by age 8 years. Socioeconomic status in infancy has negative effects on both stunting in infancy and poor subsequent educational outcomes in late childhood, which result in significant associations between stunting in infancy and some subsequent educational outcomes in late childhood – but not causal effects once there is control for the endogenous determination of early childhood height deficits.