Encouraging parents to invest: A randomized trial with two simple interventions in early childhood

The lottery of birth draws some children into deprived environments and others into environments where they thrive. In a field experiment in rural India with 10-20 months old children we test two scalable interventions to reduce early disadvantages in health and mental development. We distribute a durable device for home iron fortification of meals, called the Lucky Iron Leaf, and picture books together with a training for caregivers in dialogic reading. We find no significant average impact of either intervention on anemia or mental development. However, we find a cross-productivity of children's baseline health and the interventions' effectiveness. Children, who are non-anemic at baseline, improve in receptive language skills by half a standard deviation one year after implementation.