Improving Nutritional Status through Behavioral Change : Lessons from Madagascar

Galasso, Emanuela ; Umapathi, Nithin

World Bank, Washington, DC

关键词: APPLIED NUTRITION;    BEHAVIOR CHANGE;    BEHAVIORAL CHANGES;    BREASTFEEDING;    CENTRAL AMERICA;   

DOI  :  10.1596/1813-9450-4424
RP-ID  :  WPS4424

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: World Bank Open Knowledge Repository

【 摘 要 】

This paper provides evidence of theeffects of a large-scale intervention that focuses on thequality of nutritional and child care inputs during theearly stages of life. The empirical strategy uses acombination of double-difference and weighting estimators ina longitudinal survey to address the purposive placement ofparticipating communities and estimate the effect of theavailability of the program at the community level onnutritional outcomes. The authors find that the programhelped 0-5 year old children in the participatingcommunities to bridge the gap in weight for age z-scores andthe incidence of underweight. The program also hadsignificant effects in protecting long-term nutritionaloutcomes (height for age z-scores and incidence of stunting)against an underlying negative trend in the absence of theprogram. Importantly, the effect of the program exhibitssubstantial heterogeneity: gains in nutritional outcomes arelarger for more educated mothers and for villages withbetter infrastructure. The program enables the analysis toisolate responsiveness to information provision anddisentangle the effect of knowledge in the education effecton nutritional outcomes. The results are suggestive ofimportant complementarities among child care, maternaleducation, and community infrastructure.