New Delhi: Children below five years in India who receive good nutrition are likelier to complete college education, find jobs and remain unmarried in their early 20s, researchers said on Friday.

The health researchers, who surveyed a group of adults who had received a daily corn-soya blend upma meal when they were children, say their findings show how nutritional intervention during early childhood can influence long-term outcomes in education and marriage.

India has among the world's highest rates of under-nutrition and malnutrition among children. Despite progress on nutrition over the decades, experts estimate that one in four children suffers from stunting and one in four from wasting because of poor nutrition.

Government childhood nutrition initiatives, such as supplementary food in child-care centres or midday meal schemes in schools, allow health workers to track improvements in short-term parameters such as children's bodyweight or anaemia.

"But we find investments in nutrition also translate into more people in college, greater employability, and lower rates of early marriage," said Ramanan Laxminarayan, director of the Centre for Disease Dynamics Economics and Policy, a Washington DC and New Delhi-based research think tank.

Laxminarayan and his colleagues from the University of Pennsylvania and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine surveyed 1,165 adults born in villages near Hyderabad between January 1, 1987, and December 31, 1990. Among them, 654 had received the corn-soya blend upma as a nutrition supplement during their childhood and 511 had not.

The researchers have found that adults in the upma "intervention group" were 9 per cent likelier to have completed secondary school education, 11 per cent likelier to have obtained a graduate degree, and 6 per cent less likely to be married below the age of 25. They were also 5 per cent likelier to be employed. Their findings were published in The Journal of Nutrition.

Women who had received the nutritional supplement had 16 per cent higher rates of completing secondary or college education than women who had not received the supplement, and were 7 per cent less likely to be married under the age of 25.

Such education and personal parameters can influence a nation's economy. Multiple studies have shown, for instance, that the children of women who do not marry too early have better weight measures, higher school enrolment rates and better performance scores.

The first evidence for the impact of childhood nutrition on education in a developing country emerged about a decade ago from Guatemala.

"Our study adds fresh evidence - we find that a single upma meal a day can add to the number of people in college and increase their wages," Laxminarayan said.

The percentage gains, although mostly a matter of single digits, can translate into large numbers given India's population. In 2011, only about 5 million among India's 74 million people between the ages of 20 and 24 had a college degree or equivalent. The study suggests that had children across India received adequate nutrition, the number of college graduates would have been 8.7 million.

The researchers believe that nutrition influences through multiple pathways, including improved school performance and attention span, the observed long-term outcomes on education.