surprisingly little rigorous evidence on how effective these types of interventions are in terms of nutritional outcomes in the context of _<u>large-scale</u>_ <u>programs, and whether these positive</u> effects, if observed, are sustained over time.<sup>4</sup> A notable exception comes from the evaluation of an integrated nutrition and early child development project in Uganda [Alderman, 2007]. The evaluation in Uganda shows promising results, with gains for children below one year of age of about 0.22 standard deviations (SD) in weight-for-age z-score as a result of the intervention and important signs of change in health and nutrition practices. The short term time-span of the program, however, precludes the possibility of an assessment of whether these improvements persist in older cohorts. Galasso and Yau (2006) have looked at the same program under study using administrative data collected only for program participants and found that the returns to differential duration exposure of the program are positive.

We focus on two additional results that tie into the current literature on the effect of maternal education and children’s health. The important correlation between nutrition knowledge and health outcomes has been established in the economics literature (Glewwe 1999, Christiansen and Alderman 2004, Webb and Block 2004), and knowledge seems to explain most of the correlation between maternal education and nutritional outcomes. But beyond correlations, when does the provision of knowledge to mothers translate into nutritional gains? Furthermore, even if better knowledge leads to improved practices which imply a more efficient use of health inputs [Schultz 1984, Glewwe 1990], they might not be enough to impact health outcomes, since they only represent one of the components of the child health production function<sup>5</sup> . Systematic evidence on the role of such complementary inputs is very scarce [Ruel et al., 1999, Jalan, Ravallion 2003]. The SEECALINE program enables us identify the effect of the information channel of the education effect and also isolate the responsiveness to information. We interpret the differences in the returns to the program across different socio-economic groups in the population and make inferences about the role of these complementarities in light of the literature. We find that although the program explicitly targeted the poorest and more malnourished areas of the country, it is the relatively

> small studies in the nutrition literature (ex Salehi et al 2004) that point out to the potential of improved practices for improving child growth even under conditions of poverty.

> 4 The first large-scale, community-based nutrition programs were implemented in Asia and Central America (Tamil Nadu Integrated Nutrition Project (TINP) and the Bangladesh Integrated Nutrition Project (BINP), and the AIN-C program in Honduras). The programs suffered from weak evaluation design that failed to disentangle the program effect adequately. Comparing differential trends over time in intervention areas versus nonintervention areas might over/under-estimate the true changes due to the intervention if the selection bias due to the purposive targeting is not adequately addressed (Pitt, Rosenzweig, Gibbons 1993).

> 5 In the absence of a structural model of the child health production function that encompasses all the relevant inputs, one cannot tease out the underlying relationship between knowledge and adoption of practices, and in turn the link between practices and  nutritional outcomes

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