The Effect of Social Safety Net Programs on the Calorie Consumption of Poor Households in Bangladesh: an Application of Regression Discontinuity Design

Since the famine in 1974, the Bangladesh government and some national and international agencies have been providing food, or cash, or both to poor households through the Social Safety Net programs. I seek to estimate how much these programs affect the well-being of poor households. Most of the previous studies have estimated impacts of these programs on calorie consumption, simply computing the raw differential. However, both observed and unobserved characteristics bias this treatment effect. Using fuzzy Regression Discontinuity (RD) design, I control for these selection effects.