Non-market Returns to Traditional Human Capital: Nutritional Status and Traditional Knowledge in a Native Amazonian Society

Abstract

In industrial economies schooling produces positive non-market returns but do traditional forms of human capital also produce such returns, and do schooling and traditional human capital act as complements or substitutes in their association with well-being? Drawing on data from 450 adults (16+ years of age) from an indigenous Amazonian society in Bolivia, we estimate the association between traditional plant knowledge and nutritional status as measured by body-mass index. After conditioning for many covariates, we find that doubling an adult's traditional knowledge is associated with a mean improvement in BMI of 6.3 per cent; the association is stronger for unschooled adults and for those living far from the market town. Though schooling bore a negative association with traditional knowledge, those two forms of human capital had independent associations with BMI. The analysis suggests that schooling does not necessarily undermine the accumulation of traditional knowledge.

Acknowledgements

Research was funded by grants from the programmes of Biological and Cultural Anthropology of the National Science Foundation (0134225, 0200767 and 0322380), and the Wenner-Gren Foundation (Gr 7250). Thanks go to Lilian Apaza, Esther Conde, Johnny Dávila, Homero Rivas, Yerko Lobo, Lourdes Parada, Bernabé Nate, Paulino Pache, Evaristo Tayo, Santiago Cari, José Cari, Manuel Roca, Daniel Pache, Javier Pache and Vicente Cuata for help collecting the information and for logistical support. Thanks go to Elena Grigorenko, Robert Sternberg and two anonymous reviewers for commenting on earlier versions of the paper. We also thank Craig Seyfried for editorial assistance.