Children's Diets, Nutrition Knowledge, and Access to Markets

Children's Diets, Nutrition Knowledge, and Access to Markets

Published Jan 2017

Authors

Kalle Hirvonen, John Hoddinott, Bart Minten, D. Stifel

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Chronic undernutrition in Ethiopia is widespread and many children consume highly monotonous diets. To improve feeding practices in Ethiopia, a strong focus in nutrition programing has been placed on improving the nutrition knowledge of caregivers. This paper discusses the impact of caregivers' nutrition knowledge and its complementarity with market access. To test whether the effect of nutrition knowledge on children's dietary diversity depends on market access, survey data from an area with a large variation in transportation costs is used to assess the impact of nutrition knowledge with varying access to markets, but still within similar agro-climatic conditions. 

Highlights:

  • Undernutrition in Ethiopia is widespread and children consume monotonous diets.
  • Better nutrition knowledge leads to large improvements in dietary diversity.
  • But only in areas with relatively good market access. 

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