and those remaining were only able to offer poor quality services. After the end of the terrorism government made efforts to involve the community in the realization of different development objectives. The main objective was to improve the quality and the coverage of basic health services. The creation of community-managed and publicly-financed health committees ( _CLAS_ ) are an example of the effort to experiment with new ways of providing services involving the community in all phases of planning, administration, management, and supervision of public resources. Government’s initiatives were complementary to those initiatives promoted by spontaneous community organization and were based on the high level of social participation in Peru.

# **4.  Data and Variables**

The YL project collects longitudinal data in four developing countries (Peru, Ethiopia, India and Vietnam) and for two cohorts of children.<sup>9</sup> The survey includes two waves: the first phase of data collection took place in 2002, when the youngest cohort of children were aged 6-18 months and the oldest 7-8 years. The second wave was collected between the end of 2006 and the beginning of 2007, when children were aged 4-5 and 11-12 years, respectively. The attrition rate between waves is quite low (3.1 percent of the children in the youngest cohort). In the present analysis, I use the youngest cohorts which from here onward will be referred to as “1 year old cohort” at wave 1 who turns to be 5 years old at wave 2.

The YL sample for Peru gathers information for approximately 2,000 households with an over-sampling of poor areas; therefore these data are not nationally representative. The sample is spread over 20 areas (clusters) in different geographical regions.<sup>10</sup> Each cluster has to include 100 1-year-old children and thus it might be spread over several districts, towns and villages and might include both rural and urban areas. For this reason, within each cluster one or more communities can be identified. In total the YL includes people living in 82 communities.

The YL survey contains information about the socio-economic status and the composition of the household, the mother’s characteristics and social capital, the child health and nutritional status among the others. Most sections of the questionnaire, included the social capital section, have been administered to primary caregivers. The primary caregiver is defined as “the person in the household who can best answer questions about the [sampled] child. This will usually be the mother except where the child has been adopted/fostered or is being bought up by other family members”.<sup>11</sup> For the purposes of this study, the sample is restricted to primary caregivers who are biological mothers. These represent more than 95 percent of total cases.

## **4.1  Measures of alnutrition**

Anthropometric measures are often used to determine the extent of malnourishment among

> 9 For India, the sample is limited to the state of Andhra Pradesh.

> 10 These includes 3 clusters in the department of Lima, and 17 in Amazonas, Ancash, Apurimac, Arequipa, Ayacucho, Cajamarca, Huánuco, Junín, La Libertad, Piura, Puno, San Martín and Tumbes.

> 11 Young Lives, _Fieldworker Instruction Handbook_ , pag. 17

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