News: Children of Empowered Women Grew Taller

Care and USAID highlights dramatic drop in child malnutrition and provides an inside look at a program called SHOUHARDO that combined nutritional support with women’s empowerment initiatives to reduce child stunting, a key measure of malnutrition, by 28 percent in less than four years. That’s twice the rate of the average U.S. government-funded food aid project of its kind. The program was designed to reduce malnutrition among 2 million of the poorest people in Bangladesh. Researchers found that women who participated in empowerment interventions to help them fight sexual harassment, move about their communities more freely and gain a greater say in household decisions were less likely to have stunted children than women who received only direct nutrition interventions such as regular food rations. In other words, the children of empowered women actually grew taller.

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EMPLOYMENT: University of Hohenheim Post-Doctoral Appointment for Scientific Co-Worker in Gender and Nutrition

The Gender and Nutrition Department engages theoretical and practical approaches to nutrition security and sustainable food systems in the local, regional and international arena. Our teaching and research emphasize nutrition and health, social justice, gender analysis, human rights, engaged civil society, and food and identity. Our interdisciplinary group employs quantitative, qualitative, and anthropometric methods in the classroom and study investigations. We collaborate across disciplines, sectors and levels. The Chair of the Department of Gender and Food/Nutrition also directs the campus Research Center for Gender and Food/Nutrition.

Funding: DFID

DfID’s Research and Evidence Division wishes to establish a new Research Programme Consortium (RPC) on Agriculture, Food and Nutrition Security in South Asia. This is part of a 6-year program in South Asia to maintain and further expand DFID’s commitment to increase agricultural productivity and promote sustainable management of natural resources for improved food security and nutritional outcomes for poor people. The goal of this RPC is to ensure the use of new and existing research on how to deliver enhanced food and nutritional outcomes through agriculture, particularly women and children, by investment programs and policy makers. The RPC will include policy focused research into agriculture, food and nutrition security and will be driven by demands from national and regional policy processes and programs. The successful RPC will need to demonstrate at bidding stage its experience in the region, in handling complex political relationships and in forging collaborations between countries and between researchers and end users. The closing date for applications is on March 14, 2011. For supporting information, contract notice, terms of reference, and pre-qualification questionnaire, click on the following link:  http://www.dfid.gov.uk/Working-with-DFID/Procurement/Current-contract-opportunities1/Development-of-a-Research-Programme-Consortium-RPC-to-address-agriculture-food-and-nutrition-security-in-South-Asia/.

Publication: IFPRI 2020 Brief on ‘Gender: A key dimension linking agricultural programs to improved nutrition and health’

Improving the livelihoods and well-being of the rural poor is an important aim of agricultural development, promoted through agricultural intensification and commercialization strategies. But improved agricultural productivity does not necessarily translate into improved health and nutrition, either for producers or consumers. How can standard agricultural development strategies—promoting agricultural intensification, greater linkages to markets, and high-value production—also create positive impacts on health and nutrition? This brief argues that a key element linking these programs to improved outcomes is the dimension of gender roles and gender equity.

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Publication: Does increase in women’s income relative to men’s income increase food calorie intake in poor households? Evidence from Nigeria

Author: Adebayo B. Aromolaran Source: Agricultural Economics VL: 41 NO: 3-4 PG: 239-249 YR: 2010

DOI: 10.1111/j.1574-0862.2010.00442.x US: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1574-0862.2010.00442.x

ABSTRACT

This article addresses the important but not widely investigated question of how calorie consumption in African low-income households would respond to intrahousehold redistribution of income from men to women. Specifically, I use survey data on a sample of 480 households from semirural areas of south-western Nigeria to analyze the response of per capita calorie intake to changes in women’s share of household income, after controlling for per capita income and demographic characteristics at individual, household, and community levels. I also examine the effect of marginal increases in household income on per capita calorie intake conditional on the income distribution factor: women’s share of income. My results suggest that redistributing household income from men to women would neither raise per capita food energy intake nor increase the quality of food calorie source of households in rural south-western Nigeria. I also find that while the income elasticity of quantity of calorie intake is close to zero, income elasticity for quality of calorie intake is substantially positive. I conclude that neither gender-neutral household income increases nor redistribution of household income in favor of women would substantially motivate increased amounts of food energy intake within households in the population under study. However, gender neutral increase in household income is likely to substantially increase the household demand for high-quality food calorie sources.

Publication: Patterns and trends of child and maternal nutrition inequalities in Nigeria

Author: Omilola, Babatunde (IFPRI)

IFPRI Discussion Paper. Despite the fact that nonincome dimensions of well-being such as nutrition and health are now placed on the global development agenda, substantial gaps remain in our knowledge about patterns and trends in nutrition inequalities in many developing countries. The main objective of this paper is to document a useful starting point for understanding the determinants of inequalities in nutritional status and provide some understanding of the proximate causes of inequalities in nutritional status as well as the factors responsible for inequalities in health and nutritional status of children and women in the policy debate. Using Nigeria as a case study and using data from the Nigerian Demographic and Health Survey, this paper measures and decomposes the patterns and trends of inequalities in child and maternal nutritional status in Nigeria.

In particular, the paper decomposes observed nutritional inequalities into inequalities between and within demographic and socioeconomic groups to ascertain the relative contributions of the between-groups and within-group components of inequalities. To identify the most vulnerable groups in Nigeria, the paper also explores the prevalence of child and maternal malnutrition in Nigeria. The paper finds that within-group inequalities are the sources of most inequalities in the nutritional status of children and women in Nigeria. Inequalities between demographic and socioeconomic groups are less important. Child and maternal malnutrition are concentrated among the least educated households, the rural population, the north (in particular its Hausa ethnic group), and those who drink water from public wells. Malnutrition in Nigeria is a vicious cycle in that child malnutrition can be partly traced back to low birth weight (and therefore to maternal malnutrition). To interrupt this vicious cycle, the Nigerian government should take targeted and concerted actions that focus attention on addressing within-group inequalities. Intervention in the areas of primary healthcare, home-based caring practices, access to basic services (such as safe drinking water and good sanitation), education of women, and direct nutritional interventions for malnourished children seem the most appropriate.

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News: Food or Cash? New IFPRI study assesses the effectiveness of transfer programs

What makes a more effective social safety net program: transfers of food, or cash? The question is hardly academic. Governments, international agencies, and non-governmental organizations must decide whether to provide the world’s poorest people with cash, food, or a mixture of the two. In recent years, many have begun favoring cash transfers over food aid. Cash transfers are cheaper, require less administrative capacity, and allow poor households to decide how the money is spent. But are they always the most effective means of improving the lives and livelihoods of the ultra-poor?

Researchers at the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) studied four programs that provided food, cash, or a combination of food and cash to very poor communities in Bangladesh. They compared the programs’ effectiveness at improving the food security and livelihoods of particularly vulnerable populations, and considered how the benefits were divided among men, women, and children within households. They found that cash transfers were more successful at producing certain outcomes, while food transfers were best for achieving others.

For example, when the goal was women’s empowerment, cash payments to women were most effective at improving their ability to make decisions and mobilize household assets. This was particularly so when the payments came in the form of wages paid to participants in public works programs. For sustained poverty relief, those programs that combined food or cash transfers with access to credit or savings requirements had the greatest impact.

However, many women said they preferred food transfers to cash, citing worries that their husbands would spend the money on non-food items. The study found that when women’s nutrition was the objective, transfers of atta (whole wheat flour), as opposed to rice, were preferable. Because atta is considered less desirable than rice, less of it was stolen in transit and women consumed more than they did when transfers were given in the form of rice. Atta was also more easily enriched with other nutrients.

Researchers concluded that cash and food transfer programs should be designed in line with goals such as cost-effectiveness, nutritional impact, gender-specific outcomes, and long-term poverty reduction.

The IFPRI research monograph, Comparing Food and Cash Transfers to the Ultra Poor in Bangladesh, encourages policymakers to consider the specific objectives of social safety net programs before assuming that food or cash is always the answer.

Source: Zunia

Academic Publications: Mothers’ human capital and the intergenerational transmission of poverty

CPRC working paper on: The impact of mothers’ intellectual human capital and long-run nutritional status on children’s human capital Guatemala

Jere R. Behrman
Alexis Murphy
Agnes Quisumbing
Kathryn Yount

Abstract

Many prior studies find significant cross-sectional positive ordinary least squares (OLS) associations between maternal human capital (usually maternal schooling attainment) and children’s human capital (usually children’s schooling, but in some cases children’s nutritional status). This paper uses rich Guatemalan longitudinal data collected over 35 years to explore several limitations of these ‘standard’ estimates. The preferred estimates developed herein  suggest that: (1) maternal human capital is more important than suggested by the standard estimates; (2) maternal cognitive skills have a greater impact than maternal schooling attainment on children’s biological human capital; and (3) for some important indicators of children’s human capital, maternal biological capital has larger effect sizes than maternal intellectual capital (schooling and cognitive skills). These results imply that breaking the intergenerational transmission of poverty, malnutrition and intellectual deprivation through investments in women’s human capital may be more effective than previously suggested, but will require approaches that account for dimensions of women’s human capital beyond just their schooling. Effective interventions to improve women’s biological and intellectual human capital often begin in utero or in early childhood; thus, their realisation will take longer than if more schooling were the only relevant channel.

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