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

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.