成果｜史新杰研究员、陈志钢教授、刘承芳教授和俞琰莹博士生合作论文在Nutrition发表
近日，浙江大学中国农村发展研究院陈志钢教授（通讯作者）、史新杰研究员、俞琰莹博士生以及北京大学现代农学院刘承芳教授合作论文Does money matter for child nutrition? Exploration of a preschool nutrition program in rural South-Central China被营养学知名期刊Nutrition录用并在线发表。
◇ 文章摘要：
该文使用2018年湖南湘西学龄前儿童营养改善项目数据分析了贫困和儿童营养健康状况之间的关系。尽管以往很多研究将家庭贫困状态视为影响儿童营养状况的重要因素，但本文研究却发现这一关系非常微弱，尽在少数营养健康指标（比如weight-for-age z-score和height-for-age z-score）有所体现。同时，家庭贫困状态与儿童认知以及社会情绪等指标之间的相关性也不强。在一系列稳健性检验后，这一结论依旧成立。但同时本文发现，当政府的转移支付足够大时，儿童营养健康会显著改善；更为重要的是，看护人的营养知识在其中起到非常重要的作用。在全面脱贫和共同富裕的大背景下，后续对于农村低收入家庭的儿童人力资本积累应该引起足够重视，而要提高儿童营养健康状态，不仅需要一定的转移支付投入，更需要通过一定的手段提升看护人营养知识。
Abstract
Objectives:
The aim of this study was to examine the relationship between poverty and children’s nutritional outcomes.Methods: Drawing on a 2018 survey of the preschool nutrition program conducted in the Xiangxi Autonomous Prefecture, Hunan Province, China, we applied propensity score matching to estimate the average treatment effects on the treated children.
Results:
The most striking result was that although poverty is often used as predictive of poor childhood nutrition, this effect was only significant for weight-for-age z-score and height-for-age z-score, but not for other nutritional indicators, cognition, or social emotional indexes. The results varied using different measures of poverty. The weak linkage between poverty and children’s nutritional outcomes was confirmed by a series of robustness checks by changing the covariates for matching, adopting other matching methods, using bootstrapping standard errors, and building on machine learning tools.
Conclusions:
A single tool of small money transfer would have limited effects, but considerable income increases that lift the poor out of poverty are important for the poor. Additionally, a mixed tool of financial support and nutritional knowledge may lead to better outcomes, especially for those living above the poverty line.
◇ 原文链接：
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nut.2022.111850