A Comparative Assessment of the Impacts of Malawi Farm Input Subsidy and Irrigation Policies on Child Nutrition Status
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Date
2023-07
Authors
Chiwaula, Levison
Cassim, Lucius
Manja, Laston
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
African Economic Research Consortium,
Abstract
Farm input subsidy (FISP) and irrigation programmes are two of the top agricultural policy interventions that compete for resources in Malawi. Although pockets of information exist on the impacts of these policies, there is no study that compares the respective intervention impacts on child nutrition status to guide policymakers in the face of competing needs. Therefore, this study aims to fill this gap. Using data from the Fourth Integrated Household Survey (IHS4), an instrumental variables (IV) approach and quasi-experimental techniques of propensity score matching (PSM) were used to measure the impacts. The findings show that children from households that are beneficiaries of FISP have better nutrition statuses than children from non FISP or irrigation-practising households. However, the study fails to find a significant joint impact on child nutrition status, much less an individual impact, of irrigation policies, partly due to data limitations, which calls for a further, well-designed study to validate findings.