Nutrition and Child Development in Low- and Middle-Income Countries - Evaluation of Three Micronutrient Interventions
von Marion Krämer
Datum der mündl. Prüfung:2017-06-02
Erschienen:2017-07-12
Betreuer:Prof. Dr. Sebastian Vollmer
Gutachter:Prof. Dr. Sebastian Vollmer
Gutachter:Prof. Dr. Stefan Klonner
Gutachter:Prof. Dr. Matin Qaim
Dateien
Name:Dissertation_Marion Krämer.pdf
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Description:Dissertation
Zusammenfassung
Englisch
Adequate nutrition constitutes a cornerstone of human capital formation. Only a well-nourished and healthy child will attend school regularly, react properly to the stimuli from its environment and learn sufficiently to achieve good education outcomes. In contrast, a low level of education might result in low adult productivity and income poverty, which in turn might lead to malnutrition for the individual as well as his or her offspring. In this dissertation, I evaluate three approaches that aim to tackle the two mostly widespread micronutrient deficiencies worldwide: iodine and iron deficiency. Using a large dataset of 89 Demographic and Health Surveys in essay 1 we study the association between the usage of iodized salt at the household-level and child growth indicators. We find that a positive association is only robust for low birth weight, but not for other growth indicators (stunting, wasting and underweight). Using a self-collected dataset from rural India, in essay 2, we study the effect of the usage of iron-fortified iodized salt in the Indian school feeding program on child development indicators by running a randomized controlled trial. We find that the medium-term intervention of one year reduced any form of anemia by 20%. We did not find any statistically significant effect on cognitive ability or educational outcomes. In essay 3 we use the same self-collected dataset and apply a regression discontinuity design to study if informing parents about the anemia status of their child and providing them with a short and simple nutritional advice indeed results in a change of their feeding practices and improves child development indicators. We do not find any statistically significant treatment effect that is robust across specifications and consistent across indicators. Unfortunately the evaluation presented in essay 3 might however suffer from too little power.
Keywords: nutrition; child development; micronutrients; fortification; nutrition information; cognitive ability; education; child growth; demographic and health surveys; impact evaluation; randomized controlled trial; regression discontinuity design; iron; iodine