NUTRITION EDUCATION MATTERS FOR CHILD NUTRITION IN SAFETY NET PROGRAMS

Scaling up nutrition education in Bangladesh’s social safety net programs could be an effective way to improve food security and child nutrition among poor families, a study presented at a recent workshop shows.  

The IFPRI-PRRSP office in Dhaka, jointly with the WFP Mission in Bangladesh, held a stakeholder workshop titled “Which Kinds of Social Safety Net Transfers Work Best for the Rural Ultra Poor?” on December 3. The workshop attracted around 100 participants, including representatives from the government, UN agencies, donor community, NGOs, civil society, and media.

At the workshop, Dr. Akhter Ahmed, Chief of Party of IFPRI Bangladesh office, presented recent research on social safety nets in Bangladesh. The two-year study entitled the “Transfer Modality Research Initiative” has been implemented by WFP and evaluated by IFPRI. Under the initiative, 4000 ultra-poor women in the north-west and southern coastal areas of Bangladesh receive a monthly transfer of equal value but in 5 different ways: cash, food, food and cash combined, cash and nutrition education combined, and food and nutrition education combined.

The study finds that food and cash transfers have larger impact when they are combined with nutrition education, which indicates the importance of integrating behavioral change campaigns into social safety net programs.

The study also suggested that increasing the size of transfers of safety nets will generate sizable impacts on food security and nutritional outcomes. Currently the government allocates 3.2 billion US dollars in fiscal year 2012-2013 to operate over 90 safety net programs in Bangladesh. Phasing out ineffective programs and redistributing funds among the effective ones would enable the government to substantially increase the transfer size without reducing the total coverage with the same amount of money.  

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