Investment In Childhood Nutrition Has The Highest Returns On Investment, According To Economists

"Nearly half of all deaths of children under five in Africa are attributable to under nutrition." (UNICEF 2019)
Furthermore the interaction of undernutrition and infection creates a cyclic relationship resulting in weakening health and poor cognitive development of children and poor work performance in adulthood.
However, it surprisingly turns out that investing in childhood nutrition has the highest returns on investment.
But why have past interventions failed?
What can be done to make the most of this?

A few days ago I was watching an interview featuring Dr.Jordan Peterson, where he was emphasising empirical research on how poor nutrition can have extreme (and as i found out sometimes almost irreversible) effects on the a child's cognitive development and the adult he/she turns out to be in society. Touched by this, I've spent the past few days reading up the issue of Early Childhood Development in general.

Billions of dollars in aid and interventions are spent each year by Governments, Intergovernmental Organizations, NGOs and Businesses aiming to transform the livelihoods of underserved communities. Decisions about what to spend available resources on are made difficult by the plethora of possible causes to target and interventions to support. However, not all causes are the same; the return on investment (ROI) of a dollar spent in one area may impact a broader set of outcomes and in a more profound way compared to another.

In economics, the value of pursuing a particular alternative (in the presence of competing alternatives) is determined by the extra benefit (return in this case) gained in pursuing that course of action compared to the second best alternative. The limited nature of the resources available to address our ever growing basket of challenges to tackle necessitates considering returns on investment (ROI) as a prudent endeavour for governments and agencies aiming to improve socio-economic outcomes in society. Research has shown that, among several of the big challenges facing our world today, a list including causes such as starvation, lack of water, tyrannical governance, poor sanitation, poor education etc., investing in childhood nutrition has the highest returns on investment for foreign policy dollars. According to this study involving a large and diverse group of economists, it was found that Investing in Childhood Nutrition has a staggering 250:1 return on investment! This means, for every dollar we invest in childhood nutrition, we get back 250 dollars.

The effects of poor nutrition on a child’s educational performance, mental and physiological health and development have been known for a long time, yet efforts to channel resources to tackling the problem has been mediocre at best. This is compounded by the fact that household consumption decisions don’t seem to follow the assumption of rationality so central to much of classical economic theory. The poorest households are most vulnerable to this problem.

However, demand for better health, especially nutritional health cannot just be reduced to the presence of income poverty. It has been observed that increases in income in poor households do not necessarily result in the consumption of more nutritious food; rather, poor households tend to go for tastier food! The more recent branch of behavioural economics may shed a lot of light into this strange phenomenon. The central theme in behavioural economics is that economic decision making is heavily influenced by social and psychological factors. This is a striking divergence from main stream economics based on the assumption of rational decision making.

What this all mean? Well, given that investment in childhood nutrition gives us the highest returns on dollars invested and we know that poor households may not necessarily improve nutritional intake given an increase in incomes, there is great impetus for intervention by governments and humanitarian agencies to seek out alternative solutions. Let us explore some of these solutions.

First of all, because of the great improvements in school enrolment and the fact that schools are already a well-integrated aspect of most communities, school feeding programmes can be a great way to provide essential nutrition for children while also promoting academic engagement. However, these interventions have mostly been short lived due to unsustainable funding mechanisms for their huge price tags. However, since agriculture is already the principal source of livelihood in most poor communities, finding ways to mobilise local production of the essential food ingredients and engaging parents (through a Parent Teacher Association or some other mechanism) can go a long way to ensure school feeding programmes are more cost-effective and locally driven. These school feeding interventions can also be packaged with a nutritional education component.

Secondly, general public information and awareness are an important part of sustainable solutions. Working with local authorities and traditional leaders, public and communal advocacy and educational campaigns can go a long way in changing local attitudes towards nutritional decision making. Community nutrition education campaigns can be done in a number of ways: local television and radio shows by local experts, radio soap operas, descriptive poster campaigns featuring local characters, short cartoon clips, and many others.

Finally, Governments can invest in school curricula reforms and teaching methodologies to ensure up-to-date nutritional education is accessible to all children, especially those from the poorest communities.

In the end, because we know investing in childhood nutrition has the best returns on investment, this gives an additional reason for governments and humanitarian agencies to invest in finding the most economically viable interventions to make adequate nutrition is accessible to children find ways to tackle the bottle necks that have limited the success of previous and existing solutions. Innovative and locally driven approaches with schools, parents and local community leaders at their centre will be critical to reach the most sustainable solutions.