The impact of cash and food transfers: Evidence from a randomized intervention in Niger John Hoddinott International Food Policy Research Institute Susanna Sandström World Food Programme and Abo Akademi University, Turku, Finland Joanna Upton Cornell University Selected Paper prepared for presentation at the Agricultural & Applied Economics Association’s 2013 AAEA & CAES Joint Annual Meeting, Washington, DC, August 4-6, 2013. Acknowledgements: We are grateful to Kountche Boubacar Idrissa for supervising the survey team, to Lynn Brown, Gianluca Ferrera, Giorgi Dolidze, Marco Sanguineti and other staff at the World Food Programme for valuable support and conversations and seminar participants at Cornell University for comments on an earlier draft. We gratefully acknowledge funding from the Government of Spain received through the World Food Programme. Errors are ours. Corresponding author: John Hoddinott, 2033 K St. N.W., Washington D.C. 20006.
[email protected] Key words: cash and food transfers; food security; Niger; randomized intervention Copyright 2013 by John Hoddinott, Susanna Sandström and Joanna Upton. All rights reserved. Readers may make verbatim copies of this document for non-commercial purposes by any means, provided that this copyright notice appears on all such copies. Abstract We assess the relative impacts of receiving cash versus food transfers using a randomized design. Drawing on data collected in eastern Niger, we find that households randomized to receive a food basket experienced larger, positive impact on measures of food consumption and diet quality than those receiving the cash transfer. Other outcomes showed greater variation by season. Receiving food reduced the use of a number of coping strategies but this effect was more pronounced during the height of the lean season.