Hunger, Health, and Society

Abstract

Our theoretical and empirical analysis leads us to suggest some propositions that we present here by way of a summary. 1. Food aid is more nutritionally cost-effective than money aid whenever the a value of the commodity is greater than unity. This would be the case whenever the value of the commodity to the recipient exceeds its cost to the aid providing agency. We cited several reasons why this could occur, with illustrations of actual cases. 2. We do not know whether food aid is more or less cost-effective than money aid if the a value is less than unity. The marginal propensity to spend on better nutrition may be higher for food aid than for money aid. If such differences do not exist, or if they could be eliminated with nutrition education, nutritional cost-effectiveness could be enhanced by turning into cash commodities that have an a value of less than unity. 3. For foods that are found in the diets of the recipients in excess of the amounts supplied through the supplementary food aid package, the relative nutritional cost-effectiveness of commodities is always in direct proportion to their a values. 4. The precise nutritional impact of any commodity depends on the marginal propensity of the recipients to allocate additional income (conveyed through the food aid) to improving their nutritional status. If the recipients response is judged to be unsatisfactory with respect to energy (calorie) cost-effectiveness, the only possible remedy is to provide nutrition education. The cost-effectiveness of food aid in terms of protein or any other specific nutrient might also be increased by supplying a suitable commodity (such as a fortified food) that will be consumed in lieu of another commodity in the current diet. In this case, there is likely to be a trade-off of, perhaps, more protein for less energy as a consequence of selecting the commodity with the lower a value. This is sensible only if protein content is judged to be more deficient than the energy content in the recipients’ diets. 5. Selection of commodities on the basis of the or value criterion is particularly important when the intent of the programme is to improve nutrition indirectly through providing the beneficiaries with an incentive to participate in nutrition education or work programmes. 6. Substitution of the new commodity selection criteria for those currently in use in food aid programmes could bring about a large increase in nutritional cost effectiveness. Moreover, the data requirements are low and could be met at minimal cost.