Impact of community development initiatives and access to community markets on household food security and nutrition in Ghana

Abstract

In this study, we investigate the impact of community development initiatives and community markets on household food security and nutrition using nationally representative dataset of 16,772 households in Ghana. We estimate a multinomial endogenous switching regression of the impacts of these interventions on food security and nutrition while accounting for unobserved heterogeneities of households and communities in the allocation of these interventions. The results show that both interventions significantly increase household food security and nutrition, although the effects are much larger when these interventions are implemented together than in isolation. Moreover, the intervention strategies come at a cost of economic inefficiency in resource allocation which ends up making some households worse off. Thus, policymakers could consider implementing specific but complementary development interventions together and improving engagement with beneficiaries of such policies to ensure interventions are indeed effective and pro-poor.