We use four waves of panel data from Northern Ethiopia to investigate the link between Food for Work (FFW) participation and the diversity of food consumption and production. Food-based transfer programs have become a standard tool for addressing the problem of chronic food insecurity in developing countries. Such programs have the potential to expand diet diversity if food items provided under FFW are not part of the beneficiaries’ staple diet. By raising effective incomes, cash payments also have the potential to “crowd in” purchases of nutritionally important foods.

Although development intervention programs can have far-reaching impacts beyond their stated objective, there have been few careful studies of unintended outcomes of such programs. This study assesses the impact of Ethiopia’s Productive Safety Net Program (PSNP) on household size and dependency ratio using the difference in differences method based on a panel data of four rounds over 12 years. Results show that member households in the PSNP have built a larger household size and dependency ratio than non-member households.