Child growth, shocks and food aid in rural Ethiopia

Child stunting in Ethiopia has persisted at alarming rates, despite enormous amounts of food aid, often procured in response to shocks. Using nationally representative data, the study finds that while harvest failure leads to child growth faltering, food aid affected child growth positively and offset the negative effects of shocks in communities that received food aid. However, many communities that experienced shocks did not receive food aid. In sum, while food aid has helped reduce child malnutri-tion, inflexible food aid targeting, together with endemic poverty and limited maternal education, has left the prevalence of child stunting at alarming levels. Key words: child growth, child malnutrition, Ethiopia, food aid, shocks. Children that grow slowly experience poorer psychomotor development and interact less frequently in their environment (Grantham-McGregor et al.). They tend to delay school en-rolment, and score less well on cognitive tests (Martorell, 1997). Moreover, the detrimen-tal effects of slow height growth during early childhood may be long lasting. For example, Alderman, Hoddinott, and Kinsey find that in Zimbabwe, lowered stature as a pre-schooler following exposure to the 1982–84 drought re-sulted in a permanent loss of stature of 2.3 cm, a delay in starting school of 3.7 months, and 0.4 grades less of completed schooling. The com-bined effect of these factors was estimated to reduce lifetime earnings by 7%. Rural households in developing countries often live in risky environments, unable to fully protect their consumption against temporary income shocks such as droughts (Dercon). The available empirical evidence to date on the ef-fect of such income shocks on child growth sug-gests pervasive growth retardation (Martorell, 1999; Hoddinott and Kinsey). As such tem-porary income shocks may cause permanent damage to children’s future welfare and cog