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  5. Food Transfers and Child Nutrition: Evidence from India’s Public Distribution System

American Economic Journal:
Applied Economics

ISSN 1945-7782 (Print) | ISSN 1945-7790 (Online)

Food Transfers and Child Nutrition: Evidence from India’s Public Distribution System

  • Aditya Shrinivas
  • Kathy Baylis
  • Benjamin Crost
American Economic Journal: Applied Economics (Forthcoming)

Abstract

India’s National Food Security Act of 2013 (NFSA) led to one of the biggest expansions in food transfers in history, affecting over 500 million people. We use plausibly exogenous variation created by the NFSA to estimate the effect of food transfers on child nutrition. Using individual panel data across eight states in India over 5 years, we find that increased transfers significantly reduced stunting. The food transfers increased wage incomes and improved dietary diversity. Our results suggest that, in the states we study, the NFSA prevented approximately 1.8 million children from being stunted.

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