title: Height and cognitive achievement among Indian children.
abstract: Taller children perform better on average on tests of cognitive achievement, in part because of differences in early-life health and net nutrition. Recent research documenting this height-achievement slope has primarily focused on rich countries. Using the India Human Development Survey, a representative sample of 40,000 households which matches anthropometric data to learning tests, this paper documents a height-achievement slope among Indian children. The height-achievement slope in India is more than twice as steep as in the U.S. An earlier survey interviewed some IHDS children's households eleven years before. Including matched early-life control variables reduces the apparent effect of height, but does not eliminate it; water, sanitation, and hygiene may be particularly important for children's outcomes. Being one standard deviation taller is associated with being 5 percentage points more likely to be able to write, a slope that falls only to 3.4 percentage points controlling for a long list of contemporary and early-life conditions.
authors: Economics Department, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08540, USA. dspears@princeton.edu
authors: Dean
authors: D
authors: Spears
mesh_terms: D001827:Body Height; D002648:Child; D003071:Cognition; D003431:Cross-Cultural Comparison; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007194:India / Q000453:epidemiology; D007858:Learning; D008297:Male; D009752:Nutritional Status; D012424:Rural Population / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D012959:Socioeconomic Factors; D014481:United States; D014505:Urban Population / Q000706:statistics & numerical data