More than 20 percent of children under the age of 5 in Tajikistan are stunted. A large literature finds that stunting and undernutrition in early childhood are commonly the result of several contributing environmental, food, hygiene, and health-related factors. However, quantifying these...

This paper examines the costs, impacts, and cost-effectiveness of scaling up over five years the nutrition interventions included in Afghanistan's Basic Package of Health Services (BPHS) as a first step in investing in the early years to build human capital. The total public investment required...

Childhood malnutrition is still a public health concern in Malawi. Since 2013 the government of Malawi (GoM) has been implementing a large-scale multisectoral nutrition program, which expanded to all districts of the country with the World Bank Group and other donor funding. At the start of this...

El Salvador is in a nutrition transition. In the past 20 years, stunting rates have declined by 25 percent in young children, while overweight and obesity have reached epidemic proportions, affecting about 60 percent of reproductive-age (15 to 49 years) women and increasing among children under...

Substantial work has demonstrated that early nutrition and home environments, including the degree to which children receive cognitive stimulation and emotional support from parents, play a profound role in influencing early childhood development. Yet, less work has documented the joint...

This paper undertakes two calculations, one for all developing countries, the other for 34 developing countries that together account for 90 percent of the world's stunted children. The first calculation asks how much lower a country's per capita income is today as a result of some of its...

Unexpected adverse events that affect areas or populations widely (covariate shocks) can have major consequences for the welfare of a society. Although the negative effects on households, especially among the poor, are well established in the economics literature, fewer studies have focused on...

Policy and programmatic responses to undernutrition in Bangladesh : why coordinated multisectoral actions are needed -- How water and sanitation can improve nutrition outcomes -- Achievements in the water and sanitation sector -- Recommendations

This paper examines the extent to which the three key underlying determinants of nutrition-food security; adequate caregiving resources at the maternal, household, and community levels; and access to health services and a safe and hygienic environment-on their own and interactively are...

The WHO has recently debated whether to reaffirm its long-standing recommendation of mass drug administration (MDA) in areas with more than 20 percent prevalence of soil-transmitted helminths (hookworm, whipworm, and roundworm). There is consensus that the relevant deworming drugs are safe and...