The sooner the better but it’s never too late: The impact of nutrition at different periods of childhood on cognitive development

Although it has been argued that undernutrition and its consequences for child development are irreversible after the age of 2, the evidence in support of these hypotheses is inconclusive. This working paper investigates the impact of nutrition at different periods from conception to middle childhood on cognitive achievement in early adolescence using data from Ethiopia, India, Peru, and Vietnam. In order to address estimation problems the paper develops a conceptual framework that delineates the channels through which child health impacts cognitive development and uses exogenous variation in nutritional status arising from weather shocks