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Abstract
Summary
The survival and nutrition of children and, to a lesser extent, adolescents have improved substantially in the past two decades. Improvements have been linked to the delivery of effective biomedical, behavioural, and environmental interventions; however, large disparities exist between and within countries. Using data from 95 national surveys in low-income and middle-income countries (LMICs), we analyse how strongly the health, nutrition, and cognitive development of children and adolescents are related to early-life poverty. Additionally, using data from six large, long-running birth cohorts in LMICs, we show how early-life poverty can have a lasting effect on health and human capital throughout the life course. We emphasise the importance of implementing multisectoral anti-poverty policies and programmes to complement specific health and nutrition interventions delivered at an individual level, particularly at a time when COVID-19 continues to disrupt economic, health, and educational gains achieved in the recent past.
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1 International Center for Equity in Health, Federal University of Pelotas, Pelotas, Brazil
2 Postgraduate Program in Epidemiology, Federal University of Pelotas, Pelotas, Brazil
3 Hubert Department of Global Health, Rollins School of Public Health, Emory University, Atlanta, GA, USA
4 MRC Lifecourse Epidemiology Unit, University of Southampton, Southampton, UK
5 Department of Science and Innovation, National Research Foundation Centre of Excellence in Human Development, School of Public Health, Faculty of Health Sciences, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa
6 Hubert Department of Global Health, Rollins School of Public Health, Emory University, Atlanta, GA, USA; Department of Psychiatry, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK
7 Department of Nutrition, Gillings School of Global Public Health, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC, USA
8 Post-Graduate Program of Health in the Life Cycle, Catholic University of Pelotas, Pelotas, Brazil
9 Sunder Lal Jain Hospital, Delhi, India
10 INCAP Research Center for the Prevention of Chronic Diseases, Institute of Nutrition of Central America and Panama, Guatemala City, Guatemala
11 USC Office of Population Studies Foundation, University of San Carlos, Cebu, Philippines
12 Postgraduate Program in Epidemiology, Federal University of Pelotas, Pelotas, Brazil; Human Development and Violence Research Centre, Federal University of Pelotas, Pelotas, Brazil
13 SAMRC Pathways for Health Research Unit, School of Public Health, Faculty of Health Sciences, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa
14 Sitaram Bhartia Institute of Science and Research, New Delhi, India
15 MRC–Wits Rural Public Health and Health Transitions Research Unit, School of Public Health, Faculty of Health Sciences, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa; African Health Research Institute, Durban, South Africa
16 Laney Graduate School, Emory University, Atlanta, GA, USA
17 Centre for Global Child Health, Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto, ON, Canada; Institute for Global Health and Development, The Aga Khan University, Karachi, Pakistan
18 Institute for International Programs, Bloomberg School of Public Health, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, USA