Nurturing Nutrition: Evidence from a Randomized Trial of Structured Electronic Food Vouchers in the Philippines

David Raitzer, Rita Abdel Sater, Odbayar Batmunkh, Julia Girard, Lennart Reiners and Amir Jilani
Additional contact information
David Raitzer: Asian Development Bank
Rita Abdel Sater: Agence Française de Développement
Odbayar Batmunkh: Asian Development Bank
Julia Girard: Agence Française de Développement
Lennart Reiners: Asian Development Bank
Amir Jilani: Asian Development Bank

No 828, ADB Economics Working Paper Series from Asian Development Bank

Abstract: We present the findings of a pilot that randomized provision of structured electronic food vouchers to poor households in the Philippines, which was designed to inform a new national food voucher program. The study utilized a matched pair cluster-randomized controlled trial to evaluate the effectiveness of vouchers plus nutrition education sessions. It involved 4,883 poor households across five provinces, randomly assigned to the control group or to receive nutrition education and monthly electronic food vouchers worth PHP3,000 ($55) with pre-allocated shares for different food groups. After 6 months, statistically significant improvements are found in household food expenditure, dietary diversity, and food security, although the dietary and food security effects are modest on average. Food expenditure responses to voucher allocations are strongest for proteins and for fruits and vegetables, whereas the carbohydrate allocations are more fungible. Notably, dietary effects are more pronounced in highly urban areas, in households enrolled in an existing conditional cash transfer program, in those with better nutrition knowledge at baseline, in smaller-sized households, and in those that had more recently redeemed the voucher. This suggests that effectiveness could be enhanced by adjusting voucher allocation ratios towards underconsumed food groups, increasing the voucher amount, increasing redemption frequency, and improving nutrition education.

Keywords: food assistance; electronic food vouchers; nutrition; social protection (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H23 I12 I18 I38 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 36
Date: 2025-12-04
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-exp, nep-hea and nep-sea
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.adb.org/publications/nutrition-food-vouchers-philippines Full text

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ris:adbewp:021825

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in ADB Economics Working Paper Series from Asian Development Bank 6 ADB Avenue, Mandaluyong City, 1550 Metro Manila, Philippines. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Orlee Velarde ().