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This paper estimates flexible child health production functions to investigate whether better water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) practices make nutrition intake more productive for children aged 6-24 months. Using cohort data, with detailed information on nutrition intake and WASH investments, and a control function approach to account for endogeneity of inputs, we show that better WASH increases the productivity of protein and calories in the formation of child health using as proxies child height and weight. We also uncover heterogeneity in the productivity of these inputs by child gender: nutritional intake is found to be more productive for boys, and WASH investments more productive for girls. Further analysis indicates that this is not driven by differential parental invest-ments by child gender. Although the study sample are children born in the early 1980s they faced similar nutritional and WASH conditions as those faced by children currently living in poor households in low-income settings.
Authors

Research Fellow Institute for Fiscal Studies
Laura is a Research Fellow at IFS. Her current work focuses on tax and social protection policy and programme evaluation in developing countries.

Research Fellow City, University of London
Bansi is a Research Fellow of the IFS, a Senior Lecturer of Economics at the City, University of London and also a Fellow at the Global Labor Organisa

Associate Director
Britta is an IFS Associate Director, Associate Staff at the Department of Economics at the UC and Researcher at NIHR Obesity Policy Research Unit.

Research Associate University of Chile
Pamela is a Research Associate of the IFS and Assistant Professor of Economics at the Department of Industrial Engineering at the University of Chile.

Angus Phimister
Working Paper details
- DOI
- 10.1920/wp.ifs.2019.1519
- Publisher
- The IFS
Suggested citation
Abramovsky, L et al. (2019). Complementarities in the Production of Child Health. London: The IFS. Available at: https://ifs.org.uk/publications/complementarities-production-child-health (accessed: 10 February 2025).
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