Not Quite a Gandhian RCT

Living in Ahmedabad, one often sees tributes to Mahatma Gandhi and the Salt march / Dandi march that began from the Sabarmati ashram where he was based. While the Dandi march was an act of civil disobedience against the salt tax imposed by the British, evidently the diets of the poor can greatly benefit from a few doses of iodized salt (pardon the non-sequitur).

Nicholas Kristof, an op-ed columnist for the New York Times, writes today about the potential benefits of providing iodized salt to the poor in areas where it is lacking in their diet. Evidently, 1/3 of the world doesn't get enough iodine:

"When a pregnant woman doesn’t have enough iodine in her body, her child may suffer irreversible brain damage and could have an I.Q. that is 10 to 15 points lower than it would otherwise be. An educated guess is that iodine deficiency results in a needless loss of more than 1 billion I.Q. points around the world."

As an example, evidently 3/5 Pakistani schoolchildren have an iodine deficiency. Perhaps J-PAL should put this on their map of evaluating low-cost interventions to yield significant improvements in education and health outcomes? It seems like a pretty low-cost intervention to deliver over a number of years, although perhaps one of the difficulties may be in tracking respondents over many years in order to evaluate the benefits.