The impact of early-life nutrition on socioeconomic status, physical health and cognitive function through middle age

项目总结 营养是一项关键的人力资本投资，特别是在低收入和中等收入国家 目前有数亿儿童营养不良，超过10亿成年人营养不良。 在孩提时代。先前的证据表明，早年营养不良与对身体的负面影响有关 健康、受教育程度、认知技能和青年工资率。考虑到身体健康和 认知功能随着年龄的增长而下降，重要的是要问一问，早期营养是否会影响这些变化的速度 下降了。关于早期营养对寿命的影响，这是一个严重的知识缺口。这个项目将 使用来自营养实验操纵的异常丰富的纵向数据：危地马拉研究所 中美洲和巴拿马营养补充试验队列(INSTC)。INSTC是 作为一项实验性的营养补充计划于1969年启动，并进行了多轮后续行动 已经进行过了。队列成员将处于成熟成年期，47岁-，在拟议的项目期间， 在大多数LMIC中，生物学和认知老化显著的年龄。 具体地说，该项目将探索实验分配的早期营养补充剂如何影响 成年期的社会经济、身体健康和认知功能结果水平(47-y)和 这些领域从早期到成年期的变化。我们问：营养干预有影响吗？ 在成年期早期观察到的现象在以后的年龄中也会存在吗？改善儿童营养是否会产生额外的影响 随着参与者年龄的增长，这些结果会发生变化吗？我们将通过收集和分析一个 社会经济地位、身体健康和认知功能的一套综合衡量标准，其中许多 我们在之前的浪潮中采取了措施。 这项拟议的研究具有很高的潜在影响，因为童年带来了巨大的后果 对于数亿人的健康和人力资本来说，营养不良是最严重的问题。研究团队是独一无二的 非常有资格研究这个主题；团队成员对当前的知识做出了重大贡献 营养在LMICs生命周期中的重要性。通过使用适当的计量经济学和生命周期人类 资本模型，完全可以获得儿童早期数据，并建立在以前研究的基础上，该项目将 改变我们对早期生命营养以及儿童健康、认知和社会经济结果的理解 成熟的成年人。

PROJECT SUMMARY Nutrition is a key human capital investment, especially in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), where hundreds of millions of children are currently undernourished and well over a billion adults were undernourished as children. Prior evidence indicates that early-life undernutrition is associated with negative effects on physical health, schooling attainment, cognitive skills and wage rates in young adulthood. Given that physical health and cognitive function decline with age, it is important to ask whether early-life nutrition affects the pace of these declines. This is a critical knowledge gap concerning the lifespan impacts of early-life nutrition. This project will use unusually rich longitudinal data from an experimental manipulation of nutrition: the Guatemalan Institute of Nutrition of Central America and Panama (INCAP) Nutrition Supplementation Trial Cohort (INSTC). INSTC was initiated in 1969 as an experimental nutritional-supplementation program and a number of follow-up rounds have been conducted. Cohort members will be in mature adulthood, 47-64 years of age, during the proposed project, ages at which biological and cognitive aging is considerable in most LMICs. Specifically, the project will explore how experimentally allocated early-life nutritional supplementation affects levels of socioeconomic, physical-health, and cognitive-function outcomes in mature adulthood (47-64 y) and changes in these domains from early to mature adulthood. We ask: Do the nutrition intervention impacts observed earlier in adulthood persist at later ages? Does improved childhood nutrition additionally impact changes in these outcomes as participants age? We will explore these questions by collecting and analyzing a comprehensive set of measures of socioeconomic status, physical health and cognitive function, many of which we have measures in prior waves. The proposed study has high potential impact because of the enormous consequences of childhood undernutrition for the health and human capital of hundreds of millions of people. The research team is uniquely well qualified to investigate this topic; team members have made major contributions to current knowledge about the importance of nutrition over the life-course in LMICs. By using appropriate econometrics and life-cycle human capital models, with full access to the early childhood data, and building on previous studies, the project will transform our understanding of early-life nutrition and the health, cognitive and socioeconomic outcomes of mature adulthood.