The determinants of grade attainment in low-income countries: Evidence from rural Bangladesh

This paper presents an econometric analysis of the effects of child health on school enrollment and grade attainment in Bangladesh. It improves on past studies in a number of ways mainly by incorporating into its analysis the endogenous nature of child health. The results challenge the conclusions found in the literature. First, it finds that in Bangladesh, a child's health and his/her probability of being enrolled in school are at best weakly related. Second, it shows that once enrolled, nutritional deficiencies retard substantially school progress: Underweight children tend to be in lower grades than well-fed children of the same age. It is estimated that a one standard deviation improvement in weight-for-age would be expected to reduce the grades behind by about 0.25 years or about 13.5 percent of the actual years completed. Finally, the estimates suggest that the weight-for-age indicator appears as the best predictor of nutritional status.