Darrouzet-Nardi, Amelia F.

A large literature links early-life environmental shocks to later outcomes. This paper uses seasonal variation across the Democratic Republic of the Congo to test for nutrition smoothing, defined here as attaining similar height, weight and mortality outcomes despite different agroclimatic conditions at birth. We find that gaps between siblings and neighbors born at different times of year are larger in more remote rural areas, farther from the equator where there are greater seasonal differences in rainfall and temperature.

A principal effect of agricultural productivity growth is to accelerate urbanization by supplying food, labor and other resources to urban services and industry. Towns and cities may also grow for their own reasons, pulling food and resources out of rural areas. Whether pushed or pulled, the development of markets creates new opportunities for agricultural households.

Nutrition-sensitive agricultural interventions have the potential to improve child dietary quality in rural households, as evidenced by a growing body of work which concurrently measures agricultural and nutrition indicators. Our objective was to investigate whether children in rural farming communities of Nepal participating in a community-level, nutrition-sensitive development intervention had improved dietary quality compared with children living in non-participating matched rural communities.