Assessing the productive benefits of nutrition and health: An integrated human capital approach

Nutrition programs may be evaluated by comparing the productivity of individuals who have benefited from a program to the productivity of similar individuals who have not benefited. To perform such an evaluation a model of the demand for several distinct forms of human capital may be required, of how public agencies and private firms work with households to produce human capital, and of how these investments increase the productivity of individuals. An integrated wage function with endogenous human capital might then be estimated that provides policymakers with a tool for simulating the private and social returns to nutrition.