The impact of a mosquito net voucher subsidy programme on incremental ownership: The case of the Tanzania National Voucher Scheme.

The subsidisation of mosquito nets has been widely used to increase ownership in countries where malaria represents a public health problem. However, an important question that has not been addressed empirically is how far net subsidy programmes increase ownership above the level that would have prevailed in the absence of the subsidy (i.e., incremental ownership). This study addresses that gap by investigating the impact of a large-scale mosquito net voucher subsidy--the Tanzania National Voucher Scheme (TNVS)--on short-term demand for unsubsidised commercial nets, estimating a household demand model with nationally representative household survey data. The results suggest that, despite the TNVS using a categorical targeting approach that did not discriminate by wealth, it still led to a large increase in incremental ownership of mosquito nets, with limited evidence of displacement of unsubsidised sales. Although no evidence is found of an additional TNVS voucher decreasing the number of unsubsidised sales in the same period, results indicate that an additional TNVS voucher reduced the probability of purchasing any unsubsidised net in the same period by 14%. The findings also highlight the critical role played by social learning or campaign messaging in increasing mosquito net ownership.

How can agricultural interventions contribute in improving nutrition health and achieving the MDGs in least-developed countries?

There are strong conceptual linkages between agricultural development and nutrition improvements which may be categorized into three main pathways: the development, own-production and market pathways. Evidence on the efficacy of these pathways is mixed with some strong, some negative and some weak impacts. These findings reflect both the importance of agriculture for nutrition and the conditionality of that importance on contextual factors. They are also the result of insufficient high-quality empirical research investigating these linkages. The most effective 'pathways' and interventions linking agricultural change to improved nutritional outcomes change with economic growth and development, with declining importance of the development and own-production pathways and increasing importance of the market pathway. Substantial challenges in operationalizing agricultural-nutrition linkages need to be overcome to better exploit potential opportunities.