 Food transfers, cash transfers, behavior change communication and child nutrition: Evidence from BangladeshAkhter Ahmed (), John Hoddinott and Shalini Roy No 1868, IFPRI discussion papers from International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) Abstract: The importance of children’s nutritional status for subsequent human capital formation, the limited evidence of the effectiveness of social protection interventions on child nutrition, and the absence of knowledge on the intra-household impacts of cash and food transfers or how they are shaped by complementary programming motivate this paper. We implemented two, linked randomized control trials in rural Bangladesh, with treatment arms including cash transfers, a food ration, or a mixed food and cash transfer, as well as treatments where cash and nutrition behavior change communication (BCC) or where food and nutrition BCC were provided. Only cash plus nutrition BCC had a significant impact on nutritional status, but its effect on height-for-age z scores (HAZ) was large, 0.25SD. We explore the mechanisms underlying this impact. Improved diets – including increased intake of animal source foods – along with reductions in illness in the cash plus BCC treatment arm are consistent with the improvement we observe in children’s HAZ. Keywords: behavioural sciences; social protection; nutrition; children; cash transfers; behaviour; communication; Bangladesh; Southern Asia; Asia (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:fpr:ifprid:1868 Access Statistics for this paper More papers in IFPRI discussion papers from International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) Contact information at EDIRC. |
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