| By: |
Elisabetta Aurino (Imperial College London, UK);
Jasmine Fledderjohann (Lancaster University, UK);
Sukumar Vellakkal (BITS Pilano, India) |
| Abstract: |
We investigated inequalities in learning achievements at 12 years by household
food insecurity trajectories at ages 5, 8 and 12 years in a longitudinal
sample of 1,911 Indian children. Estimates included extensive child and
household controls, and lagged cognitive scores to address unobserved
individual heterogeneity in ability and early investments. Overall, household
food insecurity at any age predicted lower vocabulary, reading, maths and
English scores in early adolescence. Adolescents from households that
transitioned out from food insecurity at age 5 to later food security, and
adolescents from chronically food insecure households had the lowest scores
across all outcomes. There was heterogeneity in the relationship between
temporal occurrence of food insecurity and cognitive skills, based on
developmental and curriculum-specific timing of skill formation. Results were
robust to additional explanations of the “household food insecurity gap”, i.e.
education and health investments, parental and child education aspirations,
and child psychosocial skills. |
| Keywords: |
Cognitive skills, Learning, Adolescent, Food insecurity, India, Education inequality, Human capital, Longitudinal, Education, Lifecourse |
| JEL: |
I24 I29 I39 H52 |
| Date: |
2018 |
| URL: |
http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ven:wpaper:2018:09&r=neu |