IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/upf/upfgen/1304.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Saving lives: Evidence from a conditional food supplementation program

Author

Listed:
  • Stephan Litschig
  • Marian Meller

Abstract

Many governments in developing countries implement programs that aim to address nutrional failures in early childhood, yet evidence on the effectiveness of these interventions is scant. This paper evaluates the impact of a conditional food supplementation program on child mortality in Ecuador. The Programa de Alimentación y Nutrición Nacional (PANN) 2000 was implemented by regular staff at local public health posts and consisted of offering a free micronutrient-fortified food, Mi Papilla, for children aged 6 to 24 months in exchange for routine health check-ups for the children. Our regression discontinuity design exploits the fact that at its inception, the PANN 2000 was running for about 8 months only in the poorest communities (parroquias) of certain provinces. Our main result is that the presence of the program reduced child mortality in cohorts with 8 months of differential exposure from a level of about 2.5 percent by 1 to 1.5 percentage points.

Suggested Citation

  • Stephan Litschig & Marian Meller, 2012. "Saving lives: Evidence from a conditional food supplementation program," Economics Working Papers 1304, Department of Economics and Business, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, revised Nov 2013.
    • Handle: RePEc:upf:upfgen:1304
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://econ-papers.upf.edu/papers/1304.pdf
    File Function: Whole Paper
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Jens Ludwig & Douglas L. Miller, 2007. "Does Head Start Improve Children's Life Chances? Evidence from a Regression Discontinuity Design," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 122(1), pages 159-208.
    2. Emanuela Galasso & Nithin Umapathi, 2009. "Improving nutritional status through behavioural change: lessons from Madagascar," Journal of Development Effectiveness, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 1(1), pages 60-85.
    3. John A. Maluccio & John Hoddinott & Jere R. Behrman & Reynaldo Martorell & Agnes R. Quisumbing & Aryeh D. Stein, 2009. "The Impact of Improving Nutrition During Early Childhood on Education among Guatemalan Adults," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 119(537), pages 734-763, April.
    4. Howard White & Edoardo Masset, 2007. "Assessing interventions to improve child nutrition: a theory-based impact evaluation of the Bangladesh Integrated Nutrition Project," Journal of International Development, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 19(5), pages 627-652.
    5. Monique De Haan & Erik Plug & José Rosero, 2014. "Birth Order and Human Capital Development: Evidence from Ecuador," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 49(2), pages 359-392.
    6. Paul Gertler, 2004. "Do Conditional Cash Transfers Improve Child Health? Evidence from PROGRESA's Control Randomized Experiment," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 94(2), pages 336-341, May.
    7. David S. Lee & Thomas Lemieux, 2010. "Regression Discontinuity Designs in Economics," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 48(2), pages 281-355, June.
    8. Linnemayr, Sebastian & Alderman, Harold, 2011. "Almost random: Evaluating a large-scale randomized nutrition program in the presence of crossover," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 96(1), pages 106-114, September.
    9. John Newman & Menno Pradhan & Laura B. Rawlings & Geert Ridder & Ramiro Coa & Jose Luis Evia, 2002. "An Impact Evaluation of Education, Health, and Water Supply Investments by the Bolivian Social Investment Fund," The World Bank Economic Review, World Bank, vol. 16(2), pages 241-274, August.
    10. Lee, David S., 2008. "Randomized experiments from non-random selection in U.S. House elections," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 142(2), pages 675-697, February.
    11. Alderman, Harold, 2007. "Improving Nutrition through Community Growth Promotion: Longitudinal Study of the Nutrition and Early Child Development Program in Uganda," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 35(8), pages 1376-1389, August.
    12. Jere R. Behrman & Yingmei Cheng & Petra E. Todd, 2004. "Evaluating Preschool Programs When Length of Exposure to the Program Varies: A Nonparametric Approach," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 86(1), pages 108-132, February.
    13. Barham, Tania, 2011. "A healthier start: The effect of conditional cash transfers on neonatal and infant mortality in rural Mexico," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 94(1), pages 74-85, January.
    14. White, Howard, 2009. "Theory-Based Impact Evaluation," 3ie Publications 2009-3, International Initiative for Impact Evaluation (3ie).
    15. Victora, C.G. & Habicht, J.-P. & Bryce, J., 2004. "Evidence-Based Public Health: Moving Beyond Randomized Trials," American Journal of Public Health, American Public Health Association, vol. 94(3), pages 400-405.
    16. McCrary, Justin, 2008. "Manipulation of the running variable in the regression discontinuity design: A density test," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 142(2), pages 698-714, February.
    17. Emanuela Galasso & Nithin Umapathi & Jeffrey Yau, 2011. "Nutritional Gains from Extended Exposure to a Large-scale Nutrition Programme," Journal of African Economies, Centre for the Study of African Economies, vol. 20(5), pages 673-703, November.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Lubega, Patrick & Nakakawa, Frances & Narciso, Gaia & Newman, Carol & Kaaya, Archileo N. & Kityo, Cissy & Tumuhimbise, Gaston A., 2021. "Body and mind: Experimental evidence from women living with HIV," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 150(C).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Fitzsimons, Emla & Malde, Bansi & Mesnard, Alice & Vera-Hernández, Marcos, 2016. "Nutrition, information and household behavior: Experimental evidence from Malawi," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 122(C), pages 113-126.
    2. Villena, Mauricio G. & Sanchez, Rafael & Rojas, Eugenio, 2011. "Unintended Consequences of Childcare Regulation in Chile: Evidence from a Regression Discontinuity Design," MPRA Paper 62096, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 10 Feb 2015.
    3. Ari Hyytinen & Jaakko Meriläinen & Tuukka Saarimaa & Otto Toivanen & Janne Tukiainen, 2018. "When does regression discontinuity design work? Evidence from random election outcomes," Quantitative Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 9(2), pages 1019-1051, July.
    4. Mesnard, Alice & Vera-Hernández, Marcos & Fitzsimons, Emla & Malde, Bansi, 2012. "Household Responses to Information on Child Nutrition: Experimental Evidence from Malawi," CEPR Discussion Papers 8915, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    5. Miyazaki, Takeshi, 2016. "Intergovernmental Fiscal Transfers and Tax Efforts: Evidence from Japan," MPRA Paper 74337, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    6. Markus Frölich & Martin Huber, 2019. "Including Covariates in the Regression Discontinuity Design," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 37(4), pages 736-748, October.
    7. Guido Imbens & Karthik Kalyanaraman, 2012. "Optimal Bandwidth Choice for the Regression Discontinuity Estimator," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 79(3), pages 933-959.
    8. Mauricio Villamizar‐Villegas & Freddy A. Pinzon‐Puerto & Maria Alejandra Ruiz‐Sanchez, 2022. "A comprehensive history of regression discontinuity designs: An empirical survey of the last 60 years," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 36(4), pages 1130-1178, September.
    9. Porter, Jack & Yu, Ping, 2015. "Regression discontinuity designs with unknown discontinuity points: Testing and estimation," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 189(1), pages 132-147.
    10. Bartalotti Otávio, 2019. "Regression Discontinuity and Heteroskedasticity Robust Standard Errors: Evidence from a Fixed-Bandwidth Approximation," Journal of Econometric Methods, De Gruyter, vol. 8(1), pages 1-26, January.
    11. repec:tiu:tiucen:2012075 is not listed on IDEAS
    12. Matias D. Cattaneo & Rocío Titiunik, 2022. "Regression Discontinuity Designs," Annual Review of Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 14(1), pages 821-851, August.
    13. Gamberoni, Elisa & Gradeva, Katerina & Weber, Sebastian, 2016. "Firm responses to employment subsidies: a regression discontinuity approach to the 2012 Spanish labour market reform," Working Paper Series 1970, European Central Bank.
    14. Guido Imbens & Stefan Wager, 2019. "Optimized Regression Discontinuity Designs," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 101(2), pages 264-278, May.
    15. Miyazaki, Takeshi, 2020. "Intergovernmental fiscal transfers and tax efforts: Regression-discontinuity analysis for Japanese local governments," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 84(C).
    16. Bergolo, Marcelo & Galván, Estefanía, 2018. "Intra-household Behavioral Responses to Cash Transfer Programs. Evidence from a Regression Discontinuity Design," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 103(C), pages 100-118.
    17. Dong, Yingying, 2010. "Jumpy or Kinky? Regression Discontinuity without the Discontinuity," MPRA Paper 25461, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    18. Matias D. Cattaneo & Nicolas Idrobo & Rocio Titiunik, 2019. "A Practical Introduction to Regression Discontinuity Designs: Foundations," Papers 1911.09511, arXiv.org.
    19. Clemens Bonner & Sylvester C. W. Eijffinger, 2016. "The Impact of Liquidity Regulation on Bank Intermediation," Review of Finance, European Finance Association, vol. 20(5), pages 1945-1979.
    20. Premand, Patrick & Barry, Oumar, 2022. "Behavioral change promotion, cash transfers and early childhood development: Experimental evidence from a government program in a low-income setting," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 158(C).
    21. Deng, Taotao & Hu, Yukun & Ma, Mulan, 2019. "Regional policy and tourism: A quasi-natural experiment," Annals of Tourism Research, Elsevier, vol. 74(C), pages 1-16.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    early childhood nutrition; child mortality; food supplementation; regression discontinuity; Ecuador;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • I15 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Health and Economic Development
    • I18 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Government Policy; Regulation; Public Health

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:upf:upfgen:1304. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.econ.upf.edu/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.