Working Paper: NBER ID: w24047
Authors: Caitlin S. Brown; Martin Ravallion; Dominique Van de Walle
Abstract: Antipoverty policies assume that targeting poor households suffices in reaching poor individuals. We question this assumption. Our comprehensive assessment for sub-Saharan Africa reveals that undernourished women and children are spread widely across the household wealth and consumption distributions. Roughly three-quarters of underweight women and undernourished children are not found in the poorest 20% of households, and around half are not found in the poorest 40%. Countries with higher undernutrition tend to have higher shares of undernourished individuals in non-poor households. The results are consistent with intra-household inequality but other factors also appear to be at work including common health risks.
Keywords: Undernutrition; Poverty; Household Data; Sub-Saharan Africa
JEL Codes: I14; I32; I38
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| household wealth (D14) | individual nutritional status (I12) |
| intrahousehold inequality (D13) | individual nutritional status (I12) |
| common health risks (I10) | individual nutritional status (I12) |
| household wealth (D14) | undernutrition dispersion (I32) |
| household-targeted antipoverty programs (H53) | undernutrition effectiveness (I32) |