Food Security Act prevented stunting of 1.8 million kids: Study-OxBig News Network

Expansion of the distribution of food grains mandated by the National Food Security Act of 2013 prevented stunting of about 1.8 million children in eight states, according to a paper in the American Economic Association’s journal on applied economics. The authors of the study conducted an impact evaluation of the NFSA on child stunting, nutrition and dietary diversity.
The analysis done by Aditya Shrinivas, an economist with IIM Bangalore, along with two professors of geography and economics from the universities of California and Calgary, also showed that food transfer through the PDS increased daily wages and total wage income, improving the welfare of poor households, who are typically net labour suppliers. Additionally, it helped the poorest weather local climate shocks such as poor rainfall or drought.
The NFSA standardised entitlement quantities and prices, mandating the provision of 5kg of staple grain per person per month at 3 per kg for rice and 2 per kg for wheat. Earlier, states had discretion over prices and quantities offered to PDS beneficiaries. The paper provides evidence on how food transfers alone can reduce child stunting in developing countries.
The study selected households randomly from 30 villages across eight states which account for about 41% of India’s population – Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Gujarat, Jharkhand, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra and Odisha. Households with ration cards were the focus of the study and non-eligible households, which did not get them, served as an internal control group. The shift from per-household to per-individual entitlements benefitted larger families and states with less generous entitlements had to expand the food transfer after NFSA. The authors used these variations in entitlements to measure the value of PDS transfer before and after the NFSA.
While PDS only subsidises staple grains, the authors found that an increase in PDS transfers improves dietary diversity and improves the consumption of nutrient-dense foods. “We find that PDS transfers increase the share of the food budget spent on animal proteins while decreasing the share spent on grains. The magnitude of increase in nutrient intake is large enough to explain our core finding of a reduction in stunting,” stated the paper. The authors suggest that this could be because the decrease in out-of-pocket expenditure on staple foods frees up household food budgets for a shift of expenditure to more nutrient-dense foods.
“The magnitude of this effect was largest for infants 0 to 2 years, consistent with the critical window of the first 1,000 days of life during which a child’s development is highly sensitive to nutritional intake,” stated the paper. Extensive research has shown that extreme weather events such as droughts substantially increase child stunting, particularly for agricultural households who rely on rain-fed agriculture as their source of income. “In years with a negative rainfall shock, PDS transfers reduce stunting by 7% points, as compared to 3.2% points during a positive rainfall shock year. These results suggest that a nutrition-sensitive safety net like the PDS supports food security, making child nutrition outcomes less sensitive to local climate shocks,” observed the authors.
Moreover, food transfers can provide insurance against the rise in local food prices in response to agricultural production shocks, they added. PDS has often been criticised for not reaching the intended beneficiaries and for supplying only cereals that provide “empty calories”. However, the study found that the expansion of PDS following the implementation of NFSA did reach the intended beneficiaries, helped improve nutrition of the poorest households and brought down child stunting.