Food Transfers and Child Nutrition: Evidence from India's Public Distribution System

Aditya Shrinivas, Kathy Baylis and Benjamin Crost

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, 2025, vol. 17, issue 3, 161-207

Abstract: India's National Food Security Act of 2013 (NFSA) led to one of the biggest expansions in food transfers in history, affecting over 500 million people. We use plausibly exogenous variation created by the NFSA to estimate the effect of food transfers on child nutrition. Using individual panel data across eight states in India over five years, we find that increased transfers significantly reduced stunting. The food transfers increased wage incomes and improved dietary diversity. Our results suggest that, in the states we study, the NFSA prevented approximately 1.8 million children from being stunted.

JEL-codes: I12 I18 I38 J13 O12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
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DOI: 10.1257/app.20220505

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