Study: nurture plays huge role in education.

It's not just genes that make or break a child's academic achievement and IQ. Disputing a popular notion, two studies say good nutrition and a solid education can help create success.

The studies show early childhood health is key and indirectly imply that early childhood programs, such as Head Start, good nutrition, reading at a young age, and proper medical care for prenatal mothers and young children are worthy goals to improve academic achievement among all children. One study examined data from twins in the U.S., the second study studied Guatemalan girls into adulthood.

"What our study shows is that early childhood nutrition is important for adult educational achievement, but that this benefit becomes greater with more schooling," says Reynaldo Martorell, chairman of the international health department at the Rollins School of Public Health of Emory University and the lead author of the study. "Our message to ministers of health and ministers of education is that yes, it's important to promote schooling, but for best results, early childhood nutrition should be improved as well."

In Eric Turkheimer's study, taking data from studies of twins in the U.S. in the 1960s, the main results show that among the group of children raised in poverty, most of the variation in their IQ scores seemed to be based on differences in their rearing environments. "In the poorest children, environment accounts for everything about IQ scores. As you move up, from the poorest to the richest children, the contribution of the environment goes down and the contribution of genetics goes up," says Turkheimer, who works in the psychology department at University of Virginia.

In Martorell's study, pregnant women in Guatemala in the late 1960s and early 1970s were given two different supplements with vitamins and minerals. Women in two villages were given high protein, energy supplements while women in other villages took a no protein, low-energy supplement.

The children, born in the late 1960s and early 1970s, received the same supplements as their mothers in early years. Children receiving the more nutritious supplements had better child growth and less malnutrition in the first three years. However, motor and mental performances were only modestly better for those receiving more nutritious supplements. The participants were tested again as adolescents and then adults, and results showed major differences in tests of educational achievement, such as reading, vocabulary and general knowledge, in favor of those taking more nutritious supplements. The most recent follow up was on 130 women from the study. In those who finished primary school, women taking nutritious supplements achieved more in education than those with less nutritious supplements.