Cash Transfers and Child Nutrition

Childhood malnutrition remains a significant global problem with an estimated 162 million children under 5 suffering from stunted growth. Social protection interventions, in particular cash transfer programmes, have the potential to contribute to the improvement of child nutrition. This paper aims to provide a comprehensive overview of the impacts of cash transfer programmes on the immediate and underlying determinants of child nutrition, including the most recent evidence from impact evaluations across sub-Saharan Africa. It adopts the UNICEF extended model of care conceptual framework of child nutrition and highlights evidence on the main elements of the framework – food security, care and health care. The paper concludes that, while an increasing number of studies have stressed the positive role of cash transfer programmes in increasing resources for food, health and care, the evidence to date on the immediate determinants of child nutrition is mixed with respect to whether cash transfers can positively impact growth-related outcomes among children, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa. Key gaps that should be addressed in future research include cash transfer impacts on more proximate nutrition-related outcomes such as children’s dietary diversity, as well as caregiver behaviours, intra-household violence, and stress, all of which have implications for child health and well-being.