From 1969 to 1977, the Institute of Nutrition of Central America and Panama (INCAP) carried out a longitudinal study of growth and development in four rural communities of Guatemala. The hypothesis under study, that malnutrition retards the mental development and physical growth of preschool-aged children, was tested by means of direct interventions providing free food supplements on demand in the four communities. The children who participated in the longitudinal study are now adolescents and young adults. A R01 was obtained by a multidisciplinary team from Stanford, Cornell, UC Davis and INCAP to return to the study villages to collect extensive cross-sectional data on physical and psychosocial status. These new data have been linked with the wealth of longitudinal records available for these same individuals to allow for investigations of the long-term effects of malnutrition on human development. The main hypothesis being tested is that nutritional improvements in the critical period of gestation and the first 3 years of life enhance human capital formation as measured in adolescence. Among these improvements are larger body size, greater working capacity, earlier maturation, and improved intellectual functioning and school achievement. The request was for three years (06/01/87-05/31/90). All data have been collected and almost all data have been cleaned and are ready for use. Some phases of the study have been delayed and circumstances allow for 8 months of data analysis rather than for the anticipated 15 months. In the remaining 7 months, the most important analyses proposed in the previous R01 regarding the main effects of the food supplements will be completed. In this two year application, analyses in two major areas are proposed. First, the issue of whether the nutritional intervention had a differential impact in subgroups of the population (e.g. families with previous growth- retarded children, lower socio-economic status families, girls as opposed to boys, etc) will be explored. Second, recognizing that the group has collected one of the best longitudinal data sets in the world to characterize nuances of development in early childhood, analyses are proposed to assess the repercussions of variations in early growth and developmental status on later function in adolescence and adulthood. Extensions of previous research into these two new areas allow for a unique opportunity to test the general hypotheses that nutrition and health status in early life are related to the adolescent's potential to lead a healthy and productive life. These issues are critically important to governments and policy makers concerned with human capital formation in the midst of poverty.
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