Cash, Food, or Vouchers? Evidence from a randomized experiment in Northern Ecuador

The debate over whether to provide food-assistance and the form that this assistance should take has a long history in economics. Despite the ongoing debate, there is little rigorous evidence comparing food-assistance in the form of cash versus in-kind. This paper uses a randomized evaluation to assess the impacts and cost-effectiveness of cash, food-vouchers, and food transfers on food consumption. We find that all three modalities significantly improve food consumption. However, differences emerge in the types of food consumed with food leading to significantly larger increases in calories consumed, and vouchers leading to significantly larger increases in dietary-diversity. JEL classification: D04, I38, O12 ______________________________ We are grateful to the Centro de Estudios de Población y Desarrollo Social (CEPAR) for assistance in data collection and management, in particular to Rommel Andrade, Eduardo Arguello, Luis Revelo and Gabriela Vallejo, to Caroline Guiriec for assistance in administration of the grant, and WFP (Rome and Quito) for excellent collaboration and program implementation, in particular to Ximena Andrade, Lynn Brown, Veronica Cuesta, Thomas Debrouwer, Luis Fernandez, Yaqueline Loayzo, Deborah Hines, Carmen Galarza, Carmen Guevara, Gabriela Malo, Marcelo Moreano, Nelson Ortega, Lilian Velasquez and Amanda Villavicencio. We gratefully acknowledge funding from the Government of Spain. All errors are our own. *Poverty, Health and Nutrition Division (PHND) at the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI). Corresponding author: Melissa Hidrobo, 2033 K St. N.W., Washington D.C. 20006. [email protected].