Association between
economic growth and
early childhood
nutrition
Authors’ reply
Anna Bershteyn and colleagues
provide a useful comparison of
estimates of the association between
economic growth and early childhood
undernutrition in our study1 with
those of previous studies. Their
comparative exercise supports our
key conclusion that the contribution
of economic growth to the reduction
in early childhood undernutrition
in low-income and middle-income
countries is very small. We had already
reported both absolute and relative
changes in our study (tables 2 and 3)
underlining that absolute changes
are much smaller than relative ones.
Specifications with individuallevel
control variables, which are
important for the reduction of bias
of the estimates, show even smaller
coefficients than those reported by
Bershteyn and colleagues. The use of
year fi xed eff ects is also important to
control for factors that are unrelated to
the eff ect of economic growth; in that
sense, we stand by their use which, as
Bershteyn and colleagues show, also
leads to smaller estimates.
We would like to also clarify that we
do not underestimate the CIs in our
study through the assumption that
GDP was observed independently for
every child in the survey. The multilevel
design and clustering of standard
errors at the survey level accounts
for the fact that GDP is not observed
independently for each child in the
survey.1 The larger CIs in our other
paper on sub-Saharan Africa2 seem to
refer to the macro-level regressions
and not the micro-level regressions,
which are also reported in that paper.
The comparative exercise by
Bershteyn and colleagues shows that a
consensus should exist in the scientifi c
literature that the contribution of
economic growth to the reduction