Nutrition, information and household behavior: Experimental evidence from Malawi

Emla Fitzsimons, Bansi Malde, Alice Mesnard and Marcos Vera-Hernandez

Journal of Development Economics, 2016, vol. 122, issue C, 113-126

Abstract: Incorrect knowledge of the health production function may lead to inefficient household choices and thereby to the production of suboptimal levels of health. This paper studies the effects of a randomized intervention in rural Malawi that, over a six-month period, provided mothers of young infants with information on child nutrition without supplying any monetary or in-kind resources. A simple model first investigates theoretically how nutrition and other household choices including labor supply may change in response to the improved nutrition knowledge observed in the intervention areas. We then show empirically that the intervention improved child nutrition, household food consumption and consequently health. We find evidence that labor supply increased, which might have contributed to partially fund the increase in food consumption. This paper is the first to study whether non-health choices, particularly parental labor supply, might be affected by parents' knowledge of the child health production function.

Keywords: Infant health; Health information; Labor supply; Cluster randomized control trial (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D10 I15 I18 O12 O15 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (42)

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Working Paper: Nutrition, information, and household behaviour: experimental evidence from Malawi (2014)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:deveco:v:122:y:2016:i:c:p:113-126

DOI: 10.1016/j.jdeveco.2016.05.002

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