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

In sub-Saharan Africa, child fostering—a widespread practice in which a child moves out of the household of her biological parents—can have significant implications for a child’s overall well-being. Using longitudinal data from South Africa that includes individual tracking, we employ double machine learning to estimate the impact of fostering on child nutrition while addressing selection into treatment and endogenous attrition, two common challenges in the literature. Our findings reveal that fostering reduces the probability of being stunted by 6.9 percentage points, corresponding to a 44 percent reduction compared to the mean prevalence. This improvement appears to be driven by foster children relocating to smaller rural households that often include retired adults, typically grandparents, who receive a pension. Fostering also improves the nutritional outcomes of other children remaining in sending households, suggesting that fostering can be mutually beneficial for both groups.