TY - RPRT AU - Krämer, Marion AU - Gautam, Santosh Kumar AU - Vollmer, Sebastian TI - Anemia, Diet, and Cognitive Development: Impact of Health Information on Diet Quality and Child Nutrition in Rural India PY - 2021/Mar/ PB - Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) CY - Bonn T2 - IZA Discussion Paper IS - 14197 UR - https://www.iza.org/publications/dp14197 AB - Lack of information about health risks may limit the adoption of improved nutritional and healthy behavior. This paper studies the effect of a nutrition information intervention on household dietary behavior, hemoglobin levels, and cognitive outcomes of children in rural India. Using experimental data and regression discontinuity design that exploits the exogenous cutoff of hemoglobin level for anemia, we find statistically insignificant treatment effects on dietary improvements, child health, and cognitive outcomes of children. Our findings suggest that light-touch nutrition information alone, even when parents are informed about the health risk of their children, may not promote healthy behavior and factors other than information might constrain households in making nutritional investments for their children. KW - regression discontinuity KW - cognition KW - anemia KW - child health KW - health information KW - India ER -