Giving Compass' Take:

• Stephen Devereux explains the shortcoming of cash transfer programs aimed at improving nutrition - while benefactors consumed more food, they did not receive better nutrition. However, cash transfers combined with other interventions can improve nutrition.

• What combinations of factors do malnutrition programs need to address? What programs have already proven to be impactful? 

• Learn about the state of nutrition in Global Nutrition Report 2017. 

Stephen Devereux is the co-director of the Centre for Social Protection at the Institute of Development Studies in the United Kingdom, where experts research approaches to various development issues and offer guidance on implementation.

Can you begin by explaining the rise in popularity of cash transfers?
Stephen Devereux: In the early 2000s there was a big debate between the food aid lobby, pushed mostly by USAID and the World Food Program, and the cash transfer lobby, who argued that food aid was damaging to farmers and local trade. So we should move from food aid to cash transfers wherever we could.

Now we are seeing the results of impact evaluations that are coming out, and cash transfers are not delivering.

My argument is that cash transfers only deal with one driver of malnutrition, which is access to food. Food security is largely driven by income constraints and poverty, but nutrition security is driven by other things. Health and sanitation and water supply, things like that.

Are you seeing the conversation starting to shift toward more multifaceted policies in response to those results?
Definitely. One of the good things that has happened is that the evidence is building from programs or experiments around the world. When you have success stories in terms of reducing malnutrition, it’s almost always cash transfers combined with other interventions that gives you that big impact on malnutrition.

Read the full article about cash transfers to improve nutrition by Andrew Green at Malnutrition Deeply.