Abstract
There has been little examination of: (1) associations of early-life nutrition and adolescent cognitive skills, (2) if they vary by gender, (3) if they differ by diverse contexts, and (4) contributions of post-infancy growth to adolescent cognitive attainment. We use Young Lives data on 7687 children from Ethiopia, India, Peru, and Vietnam to undertake ordinary least squares estimates of associations between age-1 height-for-age z-score (HAZ) and age-15 cognitive outcomes (math, reading, vocabulary), controlling for child and household factors. Age-1 HAZ is positively associated with cognitive scores in all countries. Child gender-specific estimates for these coefficients either do not differ (math, reading) or favor girls (vocabulary). Augmenting models to include growth in HAZ between ages 1 and 15 years that was not predicted by HAZ at age 1 reveals that such improvements are associated with higher cognitive scores, but that sex-specific coefficients for this predictor favor boys in India and Peru. The results suggest that nutritional indicators at age 1 have gender-neutral associations with math and reading and favor girls for vocabulary achievement at age 15, but unpredicted improvements in HAZ by adolescence are associated with higher cognitive scores for boys than for girls. This evidence enriches our understanding of relationships between children’s nutritional trajectories during childhood and adolescent cognitive development, and how these associations vary by gender in some contexts to the possible disadvantage of girls.
Highlights
There is a growing consensus in the early childhood development literature that experiences in very early life, from conception through early childhood, are often very formative for later outcomes
The remainder of this paper investigates the longitudinal associations between early childhood height-for-age z-score (HAZ) and adolescent learning achievements, bridging the gap between these two strands of literature focusing on the linkages between early-life nutrition and childhood and adulthood outcomes
Girls had higher age-1-year HAZ and BMI-for-age z-scores (BAZ) scores than boys, and, lower prevalence of stunting and low BMI in all four countries, which is consistent with the literature on gender disparities in early nutrition reviewed in the introduction
Summary
There is a growing consensus in the early childhood development literature that experiences in very early life, from conception through early childhood, are often very formative for later outcomes. Other studies have suggested that influences on child growth and cognition may occur through at least middle childhood. Data from the Young Lives study have suggested that physical growth may be responsive to socioeconomic status and other influences as late as age 8 years of age (Lundeen et al 2014; Schott et al 2013). Gale et al (2004) suggest that brain growth between infancy and 9 years of age is important in determining child cognitive skills
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