1 Anthropometric Failures: nutrition, early child interventions and emotional, and cognitive development potentials Comments by: Antonio Giuffrida Social Programs Division - Regional Operations Department 3 IDB - PAHO Workshop Washington DC, 25 th of May 2007

2 Some key messages Worldwide more than 200M children under 5 fail to reach their potential in cognitive development Disadvantaged children are less likely to be productive in adulthood –Fewer years of schooling –Less learning per year of schooling Improving nutrition/ECD is an important step to reach MDG The first few years of life are particularly important

3 How poverty, poor health, nutrition and care affect child development Source: Grantham-McGregor, et al. Lancet 2007

4 Quality of Life: Human Capital Capabilities Approach (CA) Does our understanding of linkages between nutrition/ECD and development change if we adopt a human capital CA? Does our understanding of the importance (i.e. returns) of nutrition/ECD interventions? Would we construct and measure differently a Human Development Potential Index?

5 Sen’s Capabilities Approach Development should be evaluated in term of the “expansion of the capabilities of people to lead the kinds of life they value“ (Sen, 1999:18) “The capability perspective involves the concentration on freedoms to achieve in general and the capabilities to function in particular” (Sen, 1995:266). …or, less formally: capability is a sort of freedom; the substantive freedom to achieve alternative functioning combinations (i.e. different lifestyles)

6 CA: Nutrition/ECD and Development Helps to broaden economics beyond commodities and open it to more interdisciplinary cooperation (Gasper, 2002) Stress that how people live (the category of functionings) is more important than what they earn or consume

7 CA: Importance of nutrition/ECD interventions We should ask whether: –Do they provide capability for choice; and/or –Do they provide capability for a good life; and/or –Are they valued in themselves. Nutrition/ECD interventions are important under all three dimensions !!! Thus, a pure welfarist approach may be limited

8 CA: Measurement issues “Primary goods are the means to the freedom to achieve, and cannot be taken as indicators of freedom themselves” Sen (1999:264) …thus we should consider, both: –the primary goods the persons respectively holds; –the relevant characteristics that govern the conversion of primary good into the person’s ability to promote his/her ends