Identifying nutritional considerations in planning a rural development project in N. Haiti

In testing methods for introducing nutritional considerations into project planning, a combined agro/economic and nutrition survey was carried out on a representative sample of 261 households from a proposed project area in north Haiti. This paper reports results of analyses to determine targetting priorities and examine whether income generation is likely to induce improvement in nutrition. It also studied differences in associations between income source (farm, off-farm, subsistence, major crops grown) and nutritional status. Targetting more remote areas was shown to be important. Income was associated with nutritional status (height-for-age) in the upper half of the income distribution, but not the lower half. Income from any of the sources examined had the same relation with nutritional status. One conclusion was that targetting income-generating project activities to remoter areas and small-landholders was worthwhile and could, in the long-run, improve nutrition after a threshold level of income was reached.