The Value of Intrahousehold Survey Data for Age-Based Nutritional Targeting

The object of this paper has been, first to develop a framework for upper-limit indicator targeting, and to illustrate it for age based targeting of nutrition interventions using data from the Philippines. Second, the authors provide quantitative estimates of the value of individual level information and of knowledge of the intra-household allocation of calories. For the sample, age proved to be a good indicator of undernutrition. However, this was not the case with household level calorie adequacy which rendered age less useful as a targeting instrument, at an often considerable calorie cost. Food sharing, on the other hand, truly rendered age less helpful as a targeting instrument because of within-household leakage. The authors conclude that the design of nutrition interventions can be very susceptible to the level of aggregation of available information. This is consistent with findings that while poverty or undernutrition rankings of groups defined on household level characteristics were not sensitive to the level of aggregation, the rankings of groups defined on individual characteristics were very sensitive. Perhaps the costs of collection of these intra-household data outweigh the benefits, but the experiments in this paper begin to answer questions about the costs of not collecting them.