Can Agricultural Interventions Improve Child Nutrition? Evidence from Tanzania

Severely reduced height-for-age due to undernutrition is widespread in young African children, with serious implications for their health and later economic productivity. It is primarily caused by growth faltering due to hunger spells in critical periods of early child development. We assess the imp...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Folke Larsen, Anna, Lilleor, Helene Bie
Format: Journal Article
Published: Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the World Bank 2019
Subjects:
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/10986/31477
Description
Summary:Severely reduced height-for-age due to undernutrition is widespread in young African children, with serious implications for their health and later economic productivity. It is primarily caused by growth faltering due to hunger spells in critical periods of early child development. We assess the impact on early childhood nutrition, measured as height-for-age, of an agricultural intervention that improved food security among smallholder farmers by providing them with a “basket” of new technology options. We find that height-for-age measures among children from participating households increased by about 0.9 standard deviations and the incidence of stunting among them decreased by about 18 percentage points.