Scalable Nutrition Interventions in a Graduation Model Program: Experimental Evidence from Ethiopia

We explore the effect of different models of scalable nutrition services embedded within a light-touch graduation program implemented at scale in Ethiopia. The graduation program provided poor households enrolled in Ethiopia’s national safety net, the Productive Safety Net Program, with additional livelihood programming including savings groups and agricultural and livestock value-chain training. In addition, extremely poor households received a one-time livelihood grant as cash transfers or in-kind poultry grants at a value much smaller than lump-sum transfers in other graduation model programs. The experiment compared a core nutrition model of nutrition information and sanitation and hygiene activities with an enhanced model that added more intensive nutrition messaging. Results show that interaction with health-care workers and participation in community health activities increased significantly under the enhanced nutrition model, as did maternal nutritional knowledge. Neither the core nutrition model with grants nor the enhanced nutrition model without grants led to significant improvements in child dietary diversity or anthropometric outcomes. However, poultry livelihood grants complemented the enhanced nutrition model and increased child dietary diversity, while cash livelihood grants plus the enhanced nutrition model reduced childhood stunting.