The impact of unconditional child cash grant on child malnutrition and its immediate and underlying causes in five districts of the Karnali Zone, Nepal – A trend analysis

Abstract

Background The impact of unconditional cash transfers on child malnutrition and its determinants remains poorly understood. The aim of this study was evaluate the impact of an unconditional child cash grant on children’s nutritional status and its immediate (infant and young child feeding, dietary diversity, food consumption, and child infection and care) and underlying (household food security; Water, Hygiene and Sanitation (WASH) determinants among children younger than five years in the Karnali Zone, Nepal. Methods The five districts of the Karnali Zone received standard social welfare services in the form of targeted resource transfers for eligible families, plus an unconditional child cash payment, augmented by a capacity building and behavioural change education. Repeated cross-sectional surveys, with measures taken at baseline (2009, N =3750), midline (2013, N =3750) and endline (2015, N =3647), were carried out using a two-stage cluster sampling method. Multi-level Generalized Linear Mixed Models (GLMMs) with normal, binomial, Poisson, or multinomial link were performed to detect the unadjusted and adjusted trends. Results There was a linear growth among children, with a corresponding increase of 0.41 height-for-age Z-scores (p < 0.001), 0.50 weight-for-age Z-scores ( p <0.001), and 0.34 weight-for-height Z-scores ( p <0.001) between the study period, equating to a decline in child undernutrition of 9.4, 16.5, and 5.1 percentage points ( p <0.001) for stunting, underweight, and wasting respectively. Improvements were also observed in WASH outcomes, care and health seeking behaviours, and food availability. Conclusion Unconditional child cash grant embedded within a government sponsored cash transfer program for families and complemented by capacity building and behavioural change strategies improves child nutritional status and its determinants. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (10.1186/s13690-019-0352-2) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Cash assistance programming and changes over time in ability to meet basic needs, food insecurity and depressive symptoms in Raqqa Governorate, Syria: Evidence from a mixed methods, pre-posttest

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Identifying geospatial patterns in wealth disparity in child malnutrition across 640 districts in India

“…In India (Corsi, Mejía-Guevara, & Subramanian, 2016) and across South Asia (Kim, Mejía-Guevara, Corsi, Aguayo, & Subramanian, 2017), past and present socioeconomic conditions were found to be the strongest predictors of child undernutrition out of a comprehensive set of other known risk factors including those related to environmental and household practices. Household wealth directly affects one's ability to consistently secure food and access proper sanitation and health services, thereby increasing the risk of poor nutrition outcomes in children (Renzaho et al, 2019). Thus, it is important to monitor child malnutrition indicators across different levels of household wealth.…”

The annual cost of providing paid maternity leave in the informal sector in Indonesia&nbsp;

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