Does Ethiopia’s Productive Safety Net Program improve child nutrition?

We studied the link between household membership in Ethiopia’s Productive Safety Net Program (PSNP) and short-run nutrition outcomes among children aged 5 years and younger. We used 2006 and 2010 survey data from Northern Ethiopia to estimate parameters of an exogenous switching regression. This allowed us to measure the differential impacts of household characteristics on the weight-for-height Z-scores of children in member and non-member households. The magnitude and significance of household covariates differed in samples of children from PSNP and non-PSNP households and the supply of female labour seemed to matter for promoting child health in member households. Controlling for a set of observable features of children and households we found that children in member households had weight-for-height Z-scores that were 0.55 points higher than those of children in non-member households. We conclude that the PSNP is providing positive short-term nutritional benefits for children, especially in those households that are able to leverage underemployed female labor.