IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/shs/wpaper/1803.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Improving Child Health and Cognition: Evidence from a School-Based Nutrition Intervention in India

Author

Listed:
  • Marion Krämer

    (Department of Economics, University of Goettingen, Germany)

  • Santosh Kumar

    (Department of Economics and International Business, Sam Houston State University)

  • Sebastian Vollmer

    (Department of Economics & Centre for Modern Indian Studies, University of Goettingen, Germany)

Abstract

We present experimental evidence on the impact of delivering double-fortified salt (DFS), salt fortified with iron and iodine, through the Indian school-feeding program called “mid-day meal” on anemia, cognition, and math and reading outcomes of primary school children. We conducted a field experiment that randomly provided a one-year supply of DFS at a subsidized price to public primary schools in one of the poorest regions of India. The DFS treatment had significantly positive impacts on hemoglobin levels and reduced the prevalence of any form of anemia by 20 percent but these health gains did not translate into statistically significant impacts on cognition and test scores. While exploring the heterogeneity in effects, we find that treatment had statistically significant gains in anemia and test scores among children with higher treatment compliance. We further estimate that the intervention was very cost effective and can potentially be scaled up rather easily.

Suggested Citation

  • Marion Krämer & Santosh Kumar & Sebastian Vollmer, 2018. "Improving Child Health and Cognition: Evidence from a School-Based Nutrition Intervention in India," Working Papers 1803, Sam Houston State University, Department of Economics and International Business.
    • Handle: RePEc:shs:wpaper:1803
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.shsu.edu/academics/economics-and-international-business/documents/wp_series/wp18-03_paper.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Hornung, Erik & Schwerdt, Guido & Strazzeri, Maurizio, 2023. "Religious practice and student performance: Evidence from Ramadan fasting," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 205(C), pages 100-119.
    2. Seema Jayachandran, 2024. "Ten Facts About Son Preference in India," India Policy Forum, National Council of Applied Economic Research, vol. 20(1), pages 159-192.
    3. Lubina Fatimah Qureshy & Harold Alderman & Navneet Manchanda, 2023. "Benefit-cost analysis of iron fortification of rice in India: modelling potential economic gains from improving haemoglobin and averting anaemia," Journal of Development Effectiveness, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 15(1), pages 91-110, January.
    4. Krämer, Marion & Kumar, Santosh & Vollmer, Sebastian, 2021. "Anemia, diet, and cognitive development: Impact of health information on diet quality and child nutrition in rural India," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 190(C), pages 495-523.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Double-fortified salt; education; anemia; school feeding; India; and randomized controlled trial;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C93 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - Field Experiments
    • I15 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Health and Economic Development
    • O11 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Macroeconomic Analyses of Economic Development

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:shs:wpaper:1803. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Christian Raschke (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/deshsus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.