Saving Lives: Evidence from a Conditional Food Supplementation Program

This paper evaluates the impact of a conditional food supplementation program on child mortality in Ecuador. The program (PANN 2000) was implemented by regular staff at local public health posts and consisted of offering free micronutrient-fortified food for children aged 6–24 months in exchange for routine health checkups. Our regression discontinuity design exploits the fact that the program was initially running only in the poorest communities of certain provinces. We find that its presence reduced child mortality in cohorts with eight months of differential exposure from a level of about 2.5 percent by 1 to 1.5 percentage points.