Does money matter for child nutrition? exploration of a preschool nutrition program in rural South-Central China
2022
Shi, Xinjie | Chen, Kevin | Liu, Chengfang | Yu, Yanying
This study attempts to examine the relationship between poverty and children's nutritional outcomes. Drawing on a 2018 survey of the preschool nutrition program conducted in the Xiangxi Autonomous Prefecture, Hunan Province, China, we apply propensity score matching (PSM) to estimate the average treatment effects on the treated (ATT). The most striking result is that, while poverty is often used as predictive of poor childhood nutrition, this effect is only significant for weight-for-age z-score (WAZ) and Height-for-age z-score (HAZ), but not for other nutritional indicators, cognition, or social emotional indexes. The results vary using different measures of poverty. The weak linkage between poverty and children's nutritional outcomes is confirmed by a series of robustness checks by changing the covariates for matching, adopting other matching methods, using bootstrapping standard errors, and building on machine learning tools. A single tool of small money transfer would have limited effects, but considerable income increases that lift the poor out of poverty are important for the poor. In addition, a mixed tool of financial support and nutritional knowledge may lead to better outcomes, especially for those living above the poverty line.
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