Impacts of Small-Scale Irrigation Technology on the Nutritional Wellbeing of Children in the Amhara National Region of Ethiopia

It is agreed that adopting irrigation technology improves production, productivity, income, and access to food for farm households. However, evidence on nutritional outcomes of small-scale irrigation technologies is quite scant. The existing studies focus on the productivity and poverty effect of irrigation. Thus, this study examines the impact of adoption of small-scale irrigation technologies on child nutritional wellbeing of farm households where nutritional wellbeing is measured through anthropometric indicators. Data were collected from 130 sample households drawn from Dangila and Bahir Dar Zuria wereda’s 3 . The Propensity Score Matching (PSM) method was employed to identify comparable technology adopting and non-adopting sample households. The study found malnutrition to be severe in the study area. Both chronic and acute malnutrition problems were found to be wider for girls, for children aged below 2 years of age, and for non-adopters of the technology. Results of the average treatment effect on treated participants suggest that adoption of small-scale irrigation technologies has a positive impact on improving the adopters’ short-term nutritional status but its impact on children being chronically malnourished and underweight is insignificant. This study concludes that children of small-scale irrigation technology adopting households have significantly lower acute malnutrition status than those of non-adopting households even after controlling for the potential heterogeneity. Targeting diffusion of small-scale irrigation technology with early nutrition-specific intervention for long-term nutritional improvement is vital to secure child nutritional wellbeing.

学界普遍认为，采用灌溉技术可提升农户的生产规模、生产效率、收入水平与食物获取能力。然而，目前关于小型灌溉技术对营养健康影响的实证证据仍较为匮乏。现有相关研究多聚焦于灌溉技术对生产效率与减贫的作用。为此，本研究聚焦小型灌溉技术采用对农户子女营养健康状况的影响，并以人体测量学指标作为营养健康状况的衡量标准。本研究的样本数据来自从当吉拉（Dangila）与巴赫达尔祖里亚（Bahir Dar Zuria）的3个沃列达（woreda）中抽取的130户农户。本研究采用倾向得分匹配（Propensity Score Matching, PSM）方法，为采用灌溉技术的样本农户匹配特征相似的未采用农户。研究发现，调研区域内营养不良问题较为严峻：女童、2岁以下儿童以及未采用小型灌溉技术的农户子女，其慢性营养不良与急性营养不良的发生率均更高。对处理组的平均干预效应结果显示，采用小型灌溉技术可显著改善农户子女的短期营养状况，但对慢性营养不良与体重不足儿童的营养状况改善效果并不显著。本研究最终得出结论：即便控制了潜在的个体异质性，采用小型灌溉技术的农户子女，其急性营养不良发生率仍显著低于未采用该技术的农户子女。若要切实保障农户子女的营养健康状况，需在推广小型灌溉技术的同时，针对儿童早期开展专项营养干预，以实现长期营养状况的改善。