The Impact of an Unconditional Cash Transfer on Food Security and Nutrition: The Zambia Child Grant Programme

Abstract

The Child Grant Programme is one of the Government of Zambia’s largest social protection programmes. The programme provides a monthly cash payment of 60 kwacha (US$12) to very poor households with children under five years old. A randomised controlled trial of 2,515 households was implemented to investigate the impact of the programme. We find that cash transfers improve household consumption, food consumption, diet diversity and food security. These outcomes lie along the causal pathway linking the cash transfer to children’s nutrition. For children under five, we observe positive but not statistically significant impacts of the programme on weight. We find strong and significant heterogeneous impacts on reducing stunting among children who have access to clean water or more educated mothers. The results demonstrate that nutrition can be improved through an integrated and holistic strategy instead of only pursuing targeted programmes in one sector such as health or agriculture.