Research into human development and poverty reduction by EDePo at the Institute for Fiscal Studies and UCL is to be funded for three years from April 2006 by the ESRC and Department for International Development. The project, whose principal investigator is Professor Orazio Attanasio, will use data on a range of programmes in Colombia, Mexico, Nepal and India. The interdisciplinary research will look at the environment of poor families in developing countries and investigate what factors influence an individual's nutrition, health and cognitive skills from childhood to later life. Researchers, drawn from UCL Economics department, the Institute of Child Health at UCL and the Centre for the Evaluation of Development Policies at IFS, will use empirical data to evaluate the effects of different policy interventions and will attempt to model the effects of potential future policies.