Joint impact of the conditional cash transfer on child nutritional status and household expenditure in Indonesia

This study investigates the impact of a conditional cash transfer program in Indonesia, the Program Keluarga Harapan (PKH), on the marginal and joint distributions of child nutritional status and household expenditure 26–30 months after its implementation. The PKH increases the higher quantiles of weight-for-age zscore among children aged between 25 and 36 months. Its improvement is explained not by the rise in household expenditure due to the PKH but by the change in the association between nutritional status and household expenditure. Furthermore, the PKH strengthens the positive association between nutritional status and household expenditure.