Economics of malnourished children, a study of disinvestment in human capital

However, infant nutrition has characteristics which sharply differentiate it from other types of investment in human capital, i.e., formal schooling, on-the-job training, etc. First, infant malnutrition can hardly be compensated by later investment in human capital. On-the-job training is a much better substitute for a deficit in years of schooling than a deficit in preschool IQ. Second, investments in human capital made later in life can, as a policy matter, be encouraged by improvements in capital markets (e.g., loans for high school or college education). This is not true for earlier investments in human capital, which are mainly determined by the family"s income level. The most practical remedy for infant malnutrition is a redistribution of income toward the infant and his family; the cost of not undertaking this redistribution now is massive disinvestment in early human capital formation, and perhaps greatly increased distributional problems with a low-income, low-productivity segment of the population in the future.