The Role of Information and Cash Transfers on Early-Childhood Development: Short- and Long-Run Evidence from Nepal

Michael Levere, Gayatri Acharya and Prashant Bharadwaj

Economic Development and Cultural Change, 2024, vol. 72, issue 3, 1267 - 1293

Abstract: While substantial progress has been made in combating malnutrition at a global level, chronic maternal and child malnutrition remain a serious problem in many parts of the developing world. In this paper, using a randomized controlled trial design in Nepal, we evaluate a program that provided information on best practices regarding infant health and cash to families in extremely poor areas with pregnant mothers and/or children below the age of 2. We find significant and sizable impacts of the information plus cash intervention on maternal knowledge and behavior in the short run. We also find suggestive evidence of improvements in child development for the information plus cash intervention relative to groups that received information only. In a long-run, 2-year follow-up survey, we find that the information plus cash group retained significantly higher knowledge and implementation of best practices regarding early-childhood health. However, there appear to be no sustained impacts on child development or anthropometrics in the follow-up.

Date: 2024
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/723203 (application/pdf)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/723203 (text/html)
Access to the online full text or PDF requires a subscription.

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:ucp:ecdecc:doi:10.1086/723203

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Economic Development and Cultural Change from University of Chicago Press
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Journals Division ().