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Abstract
This paper examines the effects of early childhood nutrition on schooling inputs
and outcomes to assess the dynamic nature of human capital production, using panel data
from South Africa. Height-for-age Z-score is used as a measure of health and nutritional
status in early childhood. Based on a comparison of siblings, this analysis concludes that
improving children’s health significantly lowers the age when they start school, increases
grade attainment, and decreases grade repetition in the early stage of schooling.
However, this positive effect diminishes at later stages. The results also show that
households allocate more of their resources (such as school fee expenditure) to healthy
children at the early stage, although wealthier households may invest more in less well
endowed children in an attempt to reduce sibling inequality. However, fewer resources
are allocated to healthy children at later stages. By the time of transition from primary to
secondary school, the healthy child can increase household income by seeking
employment in the labor market. In other words, while health capital augments the
efficiency of investment in schooling at the early stage, it may increase opportunity costs
at the later stage, which may deter investment in schooling.