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Substantial, but indirect, evidence suggests that improving nutrition in early childhood in developing countries is a long-term economic investment. We investigated the direct effect of a nutrition intervention in early childhood on adult economic productivity.

We obtained economic data from 1424 Guatemalan individuals (aged 25–42 years) between 2002 and 2004. They accounted for 60% of the 2392 children (aged 0–7 years) who had been enrolled in a nutrition intervention study during 1969–77. In this initial study, two villages were randomly assigned a nutritious supplement (atole) for all children and two villages a less nutritious one (fresco). We estimated annual income, hours worked, and average hourly wages from all economic activities. We used linear regression models, adjusting for potentially confounding factors, to assess the relation between economic variables and exposure to …