Parental Nutrition Knowledge, Iron Deficiency,and Child Anaemia in Rural China 
QIRAN ZHAO* & XIAOHUA YU** *College of Economics and Management, China Agricultural University, Haidian District, Beijing, China, **Department ofAgricultural Economics and Rural Development, University of Goettingen, Platz der Goettinger Sieben 5, Goettingen, Germany(Original version submitted March 2018; final version accepted December 2018)
ABSTRACT Anaemia is a factor that could affect health and school performance of students and shed a shadow onpoverty in the long-run, particularly in rural China. In response, the current literature mainly pays attention to the effectof direct payments such as money and food. Although some literature indicates that a key to children’s nutritionalimprovement is to increase their parents’ nutrition knowledge, it has not been well studied. The main purpose of thispaper is to test whether nutrition knowledge training for parents can significantly decrease anaemia in their children.This article uses a randomised control trial of information intervention for parents of more than 2000 fourth and fifthgrade students in 42 randomly selected rural primary schools in northwest China and confirms that parental nutritionknowledge training has a positive effect on students’ haemoglobin level, through the channel of knowledge improvementand dietary change. Specifically, the programme could reduce children’s anaemia by 6.1 per cent in probability, andincrease haemoglobin values by 2.8 on average.