A Study On Child Health And Education In Western Rural China

China has set education development and establishing a great power of human resource as priority goals, nevertheless it can only be called as a country with huge human resources presently. The educational level of western rural labor is especially low, which severely impedes the economic development of western China. However, economic development and poverty reduction experiences home and abroad in the past 50 years tell us a unanimous truth: Human capital chase generally is the forerunner of economic chase. Less developed regions must enhance its citizens' health and education level before they can shake off laggard status and move forwards. In the wake of increasingly obvious urban-rural disparity and regional gap since China's reform and opening-up, it's imperative to promote education equity and harmonious development.Children and adolescents development is closely linked to a nation's future, while primary education and health plays an indispensable role in their growth. This paper aims to study the health and nutrition status of elementary school students in poor western rural regions, and to understand the complementarity between health and education. In the perspective of economics, the paper, adopting econometric approach, examines the health impacts on educational achievement to reveal the inner link between health and education. This provides useful discussion on promoting children's nutrition and health status and pushing forward school health in western rural regions. The paper provides possible references for improving rural health and education policy pertinency and enhancing policy efficiency.Empirical analysis finds that a) In terms of physical development, western rural elementary school children grow lagging behind national average obviously when examining height and weight. Judged by national standard for student health, sample elementary students' nutrition status distributes as the following, normal weight accounts for 44.02%, overweight and obesity account for 3.34% and 4.93%, underweight and malnutrition account for 42.26% and 5.45%. The paper finds that malnutrition incidence increases as age goes up, and malnutrition and underweight are the severe problems encountered by students aged between 10 years and 14 years, b) Judged by the WHO Growth Reference 2007 for school-aged children and adolescents, the nutritional status of western rural children under analysis is discouraging. Malnutrition incidence of the sample students is 30% and increases with age. Malnutrition incidence for students above 11-year old exceeds 50% and exceeds 80% for students aged 14 years. The malnutrition status of western rural children is severe whether in terms of trend or size, c) Iron deficiency is prevalent among sample students, with 45.21% encountering iron deficiency and 40.42% suffering from iron deficiency anemia. Compared with peers nationwide, the low hemoglobin incidence of western children is 5-8 percentages higher. But, the vision status of sample students is better than their peers at national level, d) Instrument variable estimation results show that students' health status has a significant positive impact on their test scores. Holding other factors constant, each additional point increase in a student's height-for-age z-score raises his Chinese test score by 0.443 standard deviation (SD), math test score by 0.315 SD, and 0.142 SD for science test score. Putting in 100%, this means that total test score will go up by 9 points. Each additional point increase in BMI-for-age z-score will raise a student's Chinese test score by 1.559 SD and math test score by 1.146 SD. Putting in 100%, this means that Chinese test score and math test score will increase by 14.72 points and 11.41 points respectively, with total score increased by 24.14 points, e) The positive impact of health on education is larger and more significant in terms of students with relatively poor health or nutritional status. The result indicates that improvement in health of same degree brings boys one third more educational returns than for girls.This paper suggests that government should strengthen nutrition intervention on school-aged children and adolescents. It is recommended that the following measures or policies should be carried out to ensure improvement in students' health and nutritional condition. These measures include improving school-meal supply, promoting food nutrition fortification programs in western China, strengthening regular physical check for students, promoting health education, and advancing nutrition and health legislations. The proposed nutrition and health intervention will raise the efficiency of education input, boost education development in western rural regions, thus promote education equity and advance western economic development.