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More evidence on the relationship between cash transfers and child height

Abstract

We examine the effect of the Zambia Child Grant Programme – an unconditional cash transfer (CT) targeted to rural households with children under age five – on height-for-age up to four years after programme initiation. The CT scheme had large positive effects on nutritional inputs like food expenditure and meal frequency, but no impact on child height-for-age. Production function estimates indicate that food carries little weight in the production of child height in the study sample. In settings with poor health infrastructure and harsh disease environments, a stand-alone CT is unlikely to address long-term chronic malnutrition unless accompanied by complementary interventions.

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Publication date: 2020

Author(s): Averi Chakrabarti, Sudhanshu Handa, Luisa Natali, David Seidenfeld, Gelson Tembo

Journal: Journal of Development Effectiveness

Language: English

Peer reviewed: YES

Related Innocenti Project(s):

Social protection and cash transfers

Countries

Zambia