Peer-reviewed article
Cash Transfers and Child Nutrition: Pathways and Impacts
Amber Peterman, Luigi Peter Ragno, Tia Palermo, Sudhanshu Handa, Richard de Groot ·
Summary
Written by AI, not yet AICS's view · claude-haiku-4-5-20251001This article examines how cash transfer programmes can improve child nutrition by presenting a framework that explains the pathways through which cash transfers affect nutrition outcomes. The authors review impact evaluation evidence, with a focus on sub-Saharan African settings. The article identifies critical elements for improving child nutrition and highlights knowledge gaps including dietary diversity, caregiver behaviours and caregiver stress.
Key points
- Childhood malnutrition affects an estimated 162 million children under five globally, with stunted growth as a key outcome
- Cash transfer programmes are examined as a potential intervention to improve child nutrition
- Evidence is drawn primarily from impact evaluations in sub-Saharan Africa
- Knowledge gaps include understanding dietary diversity, caregiver behaviours, and caregiver stress as determinants of nutrition outcomes
Limitations
This appears to be a literature review or framework paper rather than a primary evaluation study, so it cannot provide direct evidence of intervention effectiveness from a single study. The document does not specify which particular cash transfer programmes were evaluated or what their specific impacts were.
Abstract
Childhood malnutrition remains a significant global problem, with an estimated 162 million children under the age of five suffering from stunted growth. This article examines the extent to which cash transfer programmes can improve child nutrition. It adopts a framework that captures and explains the pathways and determinants of child nutrition. The framework is then used to organize and discuss relevant evidence from the impact evaluation literature, focusing on impact pathways and new and emerging findings from sub-Saharan Africa to identify critical elements that determine child nutrition outcomes as well as knowledge gaps requiring further research, such as children's dietary diversity, caregiver behaviours and stress.