Early Stimulation and Nutrition: The Impacts of a Scalable Intervention

Orazio Attanasio; Helen Baker-Henningham; Raquel Bernal; Costas Meghir; Diana Pineda; Marta Rubio-Codina

doi:10.1093/jeea/jvac005

Early Stimulation and Nutrition: The Impacts of a Scalable Intervention

J Eur Econ Assoc. 2022 Jan 28;20(4):1395-1432. doi: 10.1093/jeea/jvac005. eCollection 2022 Aug.

Authors

Orazio Attanasio¹, Helen Baker-Henningham², Raquel Bernal³, Costas Meghir⁴, Diana Pineda⁵, Marta Rubio-Codina⁶

Affiliations

¹ Yale, USA; IFS, UK; and FAIR at NHH, Norway.
² Bangor University, UK; and University of the West Indies, Jamaica.
³ CEDE, Universidad de los Andes, Colombia.
⁴ Yale, USA; JPal, USA; and IFS, UK.
⁵ Fundación Éxito, Colombia.
⁶ Inter-American Development Bank, USA.

Abstract

Early childhood development is becoming the focus of policy worldwide. However, the evidence on the effectiveness of scalable models is scant, particularly when it comes to infants in developing countries. In this paper, we describe and evaluate with a cluster-Randomized Controlled Trial an intervention designed to improve the quality of child stimulation within the context of an existing parenting program in Colombia, known as FAMI. The intervention improved children's development by 0.16 of a standard deviation (SD) and children's nutritional status, as reflected in a reduction of 5.8 percentage points of children whose height-for-age is below -1 SD.