Evaluating the Impact of Early Childhood Nutrition and Availability of Health Service Providers on Subsequent Child Schooling: Evidence from Indonesia Family Life Survey

John T. Giles, World Bank Group
Elan Satriawan, Universitas Gadjah Mada

This paper evaluates the impact of early childhood nutritional status and the presence of a public health program on subsequent child schooling in Indonesia during the 1990s. We first estimate the dynamic relationship between early childhood nutrition and subsequent child schooling with careful attention to controlling for important but unobserved factors such as child innate healthiness and parent taste for child quality. We find that reducing the incidence of poor early childhood nutrition status reduces the probability of delayed enrollment, but not the probability of repeating a grade. When taking into account the endogeneity of childhood nutrition, estimated effects are much stronger. The effect of childhood nutrition on subsequent child schooling is stronger if the child has access to a midwife, suggesting that health service providers (midwives) complement initial nutritional status. We do not find evidence that presence of a midwife substitutes for poor nutritional status of infants.