The impact of the Rural Minimum Living Standard Guarantee (Rural Dibao) Program on child nutrition outcomes

The Rural Minimum Living Standard Guarantee (Rural Dibao) is an important unconditional cash transfer program to alleviate poverty in rural China. Despite the importance of children's nutrition in breaking poverty cycles, little is known about the impact of Rural Dibao on child nutrition outcomes. Using China Family Panel Studies (CFPS), this paper examines the effects of Rural Dibao on child nutrition outcomes and investigates potential pathways and heterogeneous effects. We exploit propensity score matching and difference-in-differences techniques to evaluate the effects of the Rural Dibao program on child nutrition outcomes. Our results suggest that Rural Dibao significantly impacts the nutrition outcomes of children up to 15 years of age. Specifically, our results suggest that Rural Dibao improves child height-to-age z-scores by 1.05 standard deviations and lowers the probability of stunting by 11.9 percentage points. Additional analyses suggest that increased protein intake is the main pathway through which Rural Dibao participation contributes to better nutrition outcomes. We also find that the effect of the program is more pronounced among girls, children who are non-left-behind or live with highly educated mothers, and those from low-income families and poor areas. Our findings suggest that Rural Dibao participation helps improve child nutrition outcomes through improving diet quality.