Child Fostering and Nutrition in South Africa (with Christelle Dumas and Elsa Gautrain) [Work in Progress]

In sub-Saharan Africa, child fostering—a widespread practice in which a child is sent to live temporarily or permanently in a household other than that of their biological parents—can have significant implications for child health. Using longitudinal data from South Africa that includes individual tracking, we employ machine learning techniques to address biases related to selection into fostering and endogenous attrition, two common challenges in the literature. Our findings reveal that fostering reduces the probability of being stunted by 7 percentage points, corresponding to a 45 percent reduction compared to the mean prevalence. This improvement appears to be driven by foster children relocating to smaller, rural households, often including retired individuals, typically grandparents who receive a pension. Furthermore, we find that fostering not only enhances the nutritional status of foster children but also benefits the nutrition of siblings who remain in the sending household, suggesting that fostering can produce mutually beneficial outcomes for both groups.