Other
The aggregate income losses from childhood stunting and the returns to a nutrition intervention aimed at reducing stunting
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Summary
Written by AI, not yet AICS's view · claude-sonnet-5-5The paper estimates how much national income developing countries lose because some of their workers were stunted in childhood. It then estimates the economic value and cost of scaling up a package of 10 nutrition interventions in 34 countries that together hold 90 percent of the world's stunted children. The authors use an accounting model built on earlier estimates of how stunting affects adult wages, through schooling, cognitive skills and height. They report that income per person is about 7 percent lower on average because of stunting, and that the nutrition package would give a high return on investment.
Key points
- Two calculations are made: one for all developing countries and one for 34 countries with 90 percent of the world's stunted children.
- The method links childhood stunting to adult wages through years of schooling, cognitive skills and height, separating each channel to avoid double counting.
- Per capita income is on average around 7 percent lower because of stunting.
- The package covers 10 nutrition interventions for which data on effects and costs exist, introduced gradually over 10 years.
- The estimated rate of return is 17 percent and the benefit-cost ratio is 15:1.
Limitations
Only a short abstract is available, so the assumptions, the named countries and the uncertainty ranges are not shown. The results come from a model that uses earlier estimates, not from a measured trial of the programme.
Abstract
This paper undertakes two calculations, one for all developing countries, the other for 34 developing countries that together account for 90 percent of the world's stunted children. The first calculation asks how much lower a country's per capita income is today as a result of some of its workers having been stunted in childhood. The analysis uses a development accounting framework, relying on micro-econometric estimates of the effects of childhood stunting on adult wages, through the effects on years of schooling, cognitive skills, and height, parsing out the relative contribution of each set of returns to avoid double counting. The estimates show that, on average, the per capita income penalty from stunting is around 7 percent. The second calculation estimates the economic value and the costs associated with scaling up a package of nutrition interventions using the same methodology and set of assumptions used in the first calculation. The analysis considers a package of 10 nutrition interventions for which data are available on the effects and costs. The estimated rate-of-return from gradually introducing this program over a period of 10 years in the 34 countries is17 percent, and the corresponding benefit-cost ratio is 15:1. (World)
Findings the Hub has extracted
Each claim below is labelled by its type of design and links back to this report.
- Intervention
- A package of 10 nutrition interventions scaled up gradually over 10 years
- Population
- Children in 34 developing countries that account for 90 percent of the world's stunted children (modelled, not a studied sample)
Key finding
Estimated rate of return of 17 percent from phasing in the package over 10 years in 34 countries
World Bank documents and reports · 1 Aug 2018