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Abstract
Early childhood nutrition is thought to be an important input into subsequent
academic achievement. This paper investigates the nutrition-learning nexus using a
unique longitudinal data set, which follows a large sample of Philippine children from
birth until the end of their primary education. We find that malnourished children
perform more poorly in school, even after correcting for the effects of unobserved
heterogeneity both across and within households. Part of the advantage that well-nourished
children enjoy arises from the fact that they enter school earlier and thus have
more time to learn. The rest of their advantage appears to stem from greater learning
productivity per year of schooling rather than from greater learning effort in the form of
homework time, school attendance, and so forth. Despite these findings, our analysis
suggests that the relationship between nutrition and learning is not likely to be of
overriding importance either for nutrition policy or in accounting for economic growth.