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Social protection and vulnerability to nutrition security: empirical evidence from Ethiopia

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Abstract

We investigate the role of productive safety net program (PSNP) and its modes of benefit transfer in vulnerability to nutritional outcomes in rural households of Ethiopia. We model a panel switching regression in a counterfactual framework to account unobserved individual heterogeneity. We find an inverse relationship between PSNP participation and households’ vulnerability to low dietary intake and diet diversity. Our findings confirm that vulnerability is reduced more with cash plus food transfers compared to either of the mechanism individually. The study sheds some light to the on-going debate on the design of mode of benefit transfer in social protection programs.

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Notes

  1. See Gilligan et al., 2009 for more discussions about Ethiopia’s PSNP.

  2. A woreda is a district.

  3. This is a standard approach; the detailed derivation and its underlying assumptions are available in Azeem et al. (2017) and the references therein.

  4. The inverse Mills ratio \((\lambda_{itk} )\) is defined as the ratio between the standard normal probability distribution function and the standard normal cumulative distribution function evaluated at each \(W_{itk} \delta\).

  5. Available as supplementary materials.

  6. The outcome equation estimates for vulnerability with respect to diet diversity and to calorie and protein consumption are presented in the appendix as supplementary materials.

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Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful to the following sources of financial support: the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Denmark (MFA) under the project “Building Resilience to Climate Change in Ethiopia: Exploring Options for Action (Project file no.: DFC File No. 18-07-KU)” and the Swedish International Cooperation Agency (Sida) through the Environment for Development initiative at the University of Gothenburg. The research results are independent, and the views and opinions expressed by project partners based on the research findings, do not necessarily reflect those of the MFA or Sida.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Environment and Climate Research Center, Policy Studies Institute, P.O.Box 2479, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

    Hailemariam Teklewold, Tagel Gebrehiwot & Mintewab Bezabih

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  1. Hailemariam Teklewold
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  2. Tagel Gebrehiwot
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  3. Mintewab Bezabih
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Correspondence to Hailemariam Teklewold.

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Appendix

Appendix

Table 7 Parameter Estimates of Factors Affecting the Participation of PSNP with Different Mode of Benefit Transfers
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Table 8 Parameter Estimates for the Household’s Vulnerability to Dietary Consumption Equation for Different PSNP’s Benefit Transfer Mechanisms
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Teklewold, H., Gebrehiwot, T. & Bezabih, M. Social protection and vulnerability to nutrition security: empirical evidence from Ethiopia. Food Sec. 14, 1191–1205 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12571-022-01289-6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12571-022-01289-6

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