Marta Favara

Maternal group participation and child nutritional status in Peru

Using data from the Peruvian sample of the Young Lives study, this paper investigates the association between maternal group participation and child nutritional status at the ages of 1 and 5 years. This study finds that the relationship between child nutrition and maternal group participation depends on the level of maternal education. In fact, maternal group participation is positively associated with child height†for†age when children were 1 year old, for those children whose mothers had had no formal education. This same association fades at 5 years of age. Maternal group participation may affect child nutrition through a number of mechanisms. This paper provides suggestive evidence on the positive role that this participation might play in promoting better breastfeeding practice and a more secure mother–child bond and in easing mothers’ access to additional resources and support.

Smarter through Social Protection? Evaluating the Impact of Ethiopia’s Safety-Net on Child Cognitive Abilities

ABSTRACT Ethiopia’s productive safety net is the second largest Social Protection Program in sub-Saharan Africa and has been rolled out to almost 10 million beneficiaries since 2005; its effects are therefore of general interest. We provide the first estimates of its impact on children’s cognitive abilities. To identify impacts of this program, we exploit four rounds of data on a cohort of children surveyed repeatedly between 2002 and 2013. We find a small but significant positive effect of the programme on both numeracy skills and vocabulary. This is driven mainly by children in households that had graduated (left) the programme just before 2013. We argue that this is at least partially related to time allocation: graduates of the programme spent more time in school than continuing beneficiaries. We also find evidence that the maths (though not language) improvement is more pronounced for boys.