There is a pressing need to clarify and quantify the independent role of formal schooling and of education in general on the development of adult health and the health of subsequent generations,especially in developing countries where resources are particularly limiting. Most previous research has been cross-sectional, has been conducted at the aggregate rather than the household level, or has not considered either the determinants of school attendance, the quality of the schooling available, or the impact of schooling on determinants of health such as wages and productivity, migration, and marriage. Our study addresses most of the limitations of the existing literature. The setting is four villages in the Oriente (Eastern) region of Guatemala and the localities to where people from these communities migrated. A unique feature of our study is that it builds upon 35 years of data collection and interaction with these individuals. Beginning in 1969, parents and children participated in a well-known longitudinal study by the Institute of Nutrition in Central America and Panama (INCAP) that is rich in data about home environment, growth, cognitive development, diet and morbidity. Subsequent follow-ups of the children, and in some cases their own children, have been conducted in 1988, 1996-1999, and most recently in 2002-2003. Our study thus links prospectively collected data on pre-schooling cognitive functioning, investments in children's schooling, educational achievment, and health status and lifestyle in adulthood. Thus we are able to look forward at the pathways through which schooling may operate, and backward at the factors that might determine schooling (and also, independently, health outcomes). Our study is a collaboration between accomplished researchers in the disciplines of epidemiology, anthropology, economics, and nutrition, who have the experience necessary for the multidisciplinary nature of the study. Members of the research team have a successful history of collaboration, in some cases over decades, in conducting and analyzing field studies and other research.
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