Beyond poverty reduction: Evidence from a multifaceted program on poverty, nutrition and child development

Adrien Bouguen; Andrew Dillon

doi:10.1016/j.jdeveco.2025.103596

Beyond poverty reduction: Evidence from a multifaceted program on poverty, nutrition and child development

Adrien Bouguen^*, Andrew Dillon

^*Corresponding author for this work

Kellogg Global Poverty Research Lab

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

Abstract

We study the impacts of a multifaceted program implemented in Burkina Faso that targets ultra-poor households with young children or pregnant women. The design includes a cash transfer program (T1), T1 plus animal transfer (T2) and T2 plus a nutrition bundle which includes fortified flour, a gardening kit and nutrition education (T3). We find that the program reduces extreme poverty in all treatment branches, but only T3 positively impacts child nutrition. T3 also impacts motor and cognitive development of new born children. Our results suggest that while standard multi-faced programs are effective at reducing poverty, nutritionally focused programs are likely necessary to better address children's long-run earning potential via improved cognitive skills.

Original language	English (US)
Article number	103596
Journal	Journal of Development Economics
Volume	178
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jdeveco.2025.103596
State	Published - Jan 2026

Funding

We are deeply grateful to Aliou Diallo for his exceptional fieldwork contributions, and to all the enumerators who worked tirelessly—often under challenging conditions—to collect this valuable data. We also extend our sincere thanks to Action contre la Faim and Terre des Hommes, the primary implementing partners, for their flexibility and close collaboration in aligning implementation with research protocols. We are particularly thankful to the entire IPA Burkina Faso team for their coordination and support throughout the project. This intervention and research project was financially supported by the Emergency Trust Fund of the European Union . An extended version of the pre-analysis plan, so-called pre-registration report (PRR), was submitted, reviewed and accepted by the Journal of Development Economics in 2018. The project received ethical approval from the IPA Institutional Review Board under registration number 00006083.

Keywords

Cash & asset transfer
Cognitive development
Multi-faceted
Nutrition

ASJC Scopus subject areas

Development
Economics and Econometrics

UN SDGs

This output contributes to the following UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

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10.1016/j.jdeveco.2025.103596

Cite this

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abstract = "We study the impacts of a multifaceted program implemented in Burkina Faso that targets ultra-poor households with young children or pregnant women. The design includes a cash transfer program (T1), T1 plus animal transfer (T2) and T2 plus a nutrition bundle which includes fortified flour, a gardening kit and nutrition education (T3). We find that the program reduces extreme poverty in all treatment branches, but only T3 positively impacts child nutrition. T3 also impacts motor and cognitive development of new born children. Our results suggest that while standard multi-faced programs are effective at reducing poverty, nutritionally focused programs are likely necessary to better address children's long-run earning potential via improved cognitive skills.",

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AB - We study the impacts of a multifaceted program implemented in Burkina Faso that targets ultra-poor households with young children or pregnant women. The design includes a cash transfer program (T1), T1 plus animal transfer (T2) and T2 plus a nutrition bundle which includes fortified flour, a gardening kit and nutrition education (T3). We find that the program reduces extreme poverty in all treatment branches, but only T3 positively impacts child nutrition. T3 also impacts motor and cognitive development of new born children. Our results suggest that while standard multi-faced programs are effective at reducing poverty, nutritionally focused programs are likely necessary to better address children's long-run earning potential via improved cognitive skills.

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Beyond poverty reduction: Evidence from a multifaceted program on poverty, nutrition and child development

Abstract

Funding

Keywords

ASJC Scopus subject areas

UN SDGs

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