Gender differences in the adequacy of poverty-targeted food assistance programs

We assess the degree to which a food voucher program for refugees in Lebanon adequately meets the nutritional needs of female- versus male-headed households. In a natural experiment in which some households received an unconditional cash transfer in addition to a food voucher, we analyze spending on food, food consumption, and food coping behaviors that results from the additional cash. The food voucher program increases food purchases, consumption, and dietary diversity, and reduces food coping strategies. Households who receive the additional cash transfer continue spending more on food and continue to increase food consumption. These latter effects are concentrated in female-headed households, indicating that the food voucher benefit level fell short either in providing for these families’ nutritional needs or in meeting their food consumption preferences despite the fact that they were assessed as equally impoverished by a proxy means test used to target the program. These results imply that social assistance programs concerned with addressing a specific type of deprivation could take into account differences in the incidence of that deprivation when setting benefit levels.