Alderman, Harold

Gilligan, Daniel

Leight, Jessica

Tambet, Heleene

Mulford, Michael

Mamo, Tigist

We explore the impact of different models of scalable nutrition services embedded within a light-touch graduation program, implemented at scale in Ethiopia. The graduation program provided poor households enrolled in Ethiopia’s national safety net, the Protective Safety Net Program (PSNP), with additional livelihood programming including savings groups, business skills training and linkages to financial services. In addition, extremely poor households received a one-time livelihood grant on an experimental basis, as cash transfers or in-kind poultry grants, at a value much smaller than lump sum transfers in other graduation model programs in recent literature. The experiment compared a core nutrition model of nutrition information and sanitation and hygiene activities to an enhanced model that added more intensive nutrition messaging, supplementary feeding of malnourished children, mental health services, and a male engagement activity. Results show that interaction with health care workers and participation in community health activities increased significantly under the enhanced nutrition model, as did maternal nutritional knowledge. Nevertheless, neither nutrition model led to significant improvements in child dietary diversity or anthropometric outcomes on average. However, cash livelihood grants combined with the enhanced nutrition model reduced childhood stunting.

Including scalable nutrition interventions in a graduation model program: Experimental evidence from Ethiopia

Hidrobo, Melissa

Ethiopia has made major strides in improving nutrition in the past two decades; the prevalence of stunting decreased considerably from 58% in 2000 to 38% in 2016 and further to 37% in 2018.1 While there is no consensus on the underlying causes of this improvement—although substantial increases in income and education surely contributed—there is consensus that more must be done to maintain the momentum. In particular, a number of infant and young child feeding (IYCF) practices can be improved. While breastfeeding initiation is nearly universal, many children are not exclusively breastfed until they are 6 months old, which is the recommended practice. Similarly, few children age 6–23 months meet the minimum acceptable dietary standards. This brief presents evidence on the impact of the SPIR project on key IYCF practices at the time of the midline survey.

The effects of SPIR Interventions on nutrition and childcare: Evidence from the SPIR midline survey

Knauer, Heather A.

Balasanyan, Sona

Bakhshinyan, Elmira

Many school feeding programs target child hunger, nutritional deficiencies, attendance, and education outcomes but often do not examine their effects on cognitive development. In this cluster-randomized controlled trial, we tested the effects of adding a morning snack to a school lunch program on the fluid intelligence of 951 children ages 4 to 6 years. While there were no significant effects on development overall, the morning snack improved short-term memory (STM) and total score on the Wechsler Preschool and Primary Scale of Intelligence, Fourth Edition (WPPSI-IV) among children from the lowest quartile of household expenditures (STM: 0.35SD, p = 0.020; WPPSI-IV: 0.65SD, p = 0.087), and those whose mothers completed secondary school or less (STM: 0.35SD, p = 0.002; total WPPSI-IV: 0.81SD, p = 0.011). For at risk preschoolers, school snack programs may help meet their developmental needs.

Promoting school readiness through a preschool feeding program: A nutritional nudge to improve at-risk preschooler’s cognitive development in Armenia

Alderman, Harold

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