Children's Nutrition, School Quality, and Primary School Enrollment in the Philippines

Abstract

We examine the importance of child health and nutrition, family background and the characteristics of public primary schools and teachers for enrollment in the first grade using longitudinal data on 1,251 school-age children and families, as well as the ECD (early childhood development)-related providers that serve their communities collected from three regions in the Philippines. The first research question relates to the associations between children’s health and nutrition at pre-school age (height for age z scores and hemoglobin levels) and enrollment in the first grade, and whether these associations are robust to standard corrections for the possibility that child health and nutrition represent, in part, omitted variables. Second, we examine the effect of multiple dimensions of school and teacher quality on enrollment with particular attention to whether there are important interactions between family background (mother’s schooling, father’s schooling) and the accessibility and quality of primary schools and teachers in their associations with enrollment. In a similar vein, we consider whether the importance of children’s health and nutrition for enrollment in school is greater in communities where families have access to better schools. Our major findings indicate that 1) children’s hemoglobin levels have significant and positive effects on school enrollment that are understated in models that take child health and nutrition as pre-determined and 2) there are important interactions between family background on the one hand and the quality and accessibility of schools on the other that suggest important complementarities in their effect on grade 1 enrollment. We do not find important interactions between children’s nutrition and the quality of schools and teachers in their relationship with enrollment. The findings suggest the importance of accounting for omitted variables when making inferences about the role of child health and nutrition or schools and teachers for schooling. Acknowledgements This research was supported by a grant from the International Center for the Study of East Asian Development (ICSEAD), Kitakyushu, Japan; R01-TW05604-01 (“Filipino Early Childhood Development: Longitudinal Analysis”) funded by the National Institutes of Health/Fogarty International Center, National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), the Office of Behavioral and Social Science Research, the Global Development Network, the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) of the Government of the Philippines, the World Bank Research Advisory Committee, and the Population Council fellowship fund. We thank all these organizations for support for this project. This paper will be presented at the Population Association of American (PAA) Annual Meetings in Los Angeles on 30 March 2006.

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