Crop Diversification and Child Health: Empirical Evidence From Tanzania

Malnutrition is recognized as a major issue among low-income households in developing countries with long-term implications for economic development. Recently, agricultural diversification has been recognized as a strategy to improve nutrition and health, and a risk coping strategy used by farmers in the face of climate change. However, there is no systematic empirical evidence on the role played by crop diversification in improving human health. We use the Tanzania National Panel Survey for years 2008 and 2010, which includes about 3,700 children, to investigate the effect of crop diversification on child health. Using an instrumental variable approach we estimate the effect of crop diversification on child growth and control for unobserved heterogeneity. We show that crop diversification has a positive and significant impact on long-term child nutritional status, in particular for girls. An increase in crop diversification has a positive and significant effect on children’s height, while it has no effect on weight, and BMI.