American Economic Journal:
Applied Economics
ISSN 1945-7782 (Print) | ISSN 1945-7790 (Online)
Food Transfers and Child Nutrition: Evidence from India's Public Distribution System
American Economic Journal: Applied Economics
vol. 17,
no. 3, July 2025
(pp. 161–207)
Abstract
India's National Food Security Act of 2013 (NFSA) led to one of the biggest expansions in food transfers in history, affecting over 500 million people. We use plausibly exogenous variation created by the NFSA to estimate the effect of food transfers on child nutrition. Using individual panel data across eight states in India over five years, we find that increased transfers significantly reduced stunting. The food transfers increased wage incomes and improved dietary diversity. Our results suggest that, in the states we study, the NFSA prevented approximately 1.8 million children from being stunted.Citation
Shrinivas, Aditya, Kathy Baylis, and Benjamin Crost. 2025. "Food Transfers and Child Nutrition: Evidence from India's Public Distribution System." American Economic Journal: Applied Economics 17 (3): 161–207. DOI: 10.1257/app.20220505Additional Materials
JEL Classification
- I12 Health Behavior
- I18 Health: Government Policy; Regulation; Public Health
- I38 Welfare, Well-Being, and Poverty: Government Programs; Provision and Effects of Welfare Programs
- J13 Fertility; Family Planning; Child Care; Children; Youth
- O12 Microeconomic Analyses of Economic Development