Height and Cognitive Achievement of Vietnamese Children

SummaryA longitudinal dataset that follows 1,200 Vietnamese children born in 2001–02 is used to investigate the impact of child malnutrition on cognitive development. We demonstrate that the impact of early childhood stunting on cognition can be estimated with significant bias for a majority of children if researchers omit the data on gestational age. The negative impact of the length in preterm on the cognitive achievement of pre-schoolers is statistically significant. Having controlled for the effect of the length in preterm, however, the effect of height-for-age at age one on cognitive achievement at age five is not statistically significant.