William A Masters
Datos Biográficos
| ID | 75264 |
|---|---|
| NOMBRE | William A Masters |
| NOMBRES | William A |
| APELLIDO | Masters |
| FIRMA | MASTERS W A |
| AFILIACIONES | Tufts University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-4546-7291 |
| VERIFICADO | Sí |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 31 |
| TOTAL DE CITAS | 91 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 30 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 0 |
| PRIMER AÑO DE PUBLICACIÓN | 1976 |
| AÑO MÁS RECIENTE DE PUBLICACIÓN | 2026 |
| ÍNDICE H | 4 |
Healthy diets are affordable but often displaced by other foods in Indonesia
In places where healthy diets are affordable, other factors may contribute to poor diets. • We use Indonesia as a case study for analyzing economic and behavioral barriers to consumption of healthy diets. • In Indonesia, healthy diets are affordable but not chosen. • Consumption of unhealthy discretionary foods is high for households of all incomes. • Nutrient and food group adequacy are low for households of all incomes. New methods for modeling…
Tracking the affordability of least-cost healthy diets helps guide intervention for food security and improved nutrition
Trade policy reform, retail food prices and access to healthy diets worldwide
Recent use of least-cost diets as a measure of global food security revealed that over 3 billion people are unable to afford sufficient nutritious food for an active and healthy life, driving demand for policy changes to improve access and affordability. This study quantifies the role of imports in consumer prices, matching retail prices in 144 countries to imports by origin of the item or its main ingredient, resulting in a total of 13,846 pairs…
Sibling rivalry between twins in utero and childhood
BACKGROUND: This study explores the magnitude and timing of sex and gender disparities in child development by describing differences in health outcomes for male and female siblings, comparing twins to control for all aspects of life circumstances other than sex and gender. METHODS: We construct a repeat cross-sectional dataset of 191 838 twins among 1.7 million births recorded in 214 nationally representative household surveys for 72 countries b…
A collective call to strengthen monitoring and evaluation efforts to support healthy and sustainable food systems
There is widespread agreement among experts that a fundamental reorientation of global, regional, national and local food systems is needed to achieve the UN Sustainable Development Goals Agenda and address the linked challenges of undernutrition, obesity and climate change described as the Global Syndemic. Recognising the urgency of this imperative, a wide range of global stakeholders – governments, civil society, academia, agri-food industry, b…
Affordability of the EAT–Lancet reference diet
BACKGROUND: The EAT-Lancet Commission drew on all available nutritional and environmental evidence to construct the first global benchmark diet capable of sustaining health and protecting the planet, but it did not assess dietary affordability. We used food price and household income data to estimate affordability of EAT-Lancet benchmark diets, as a first step to guiding interventions to improve diets around the world. METHODS: We obtained retail…
The International Diet-Health Index
Introduction Diet is a major modifiable risk factor for cardiometabolic disease; however, interpretable measures capturing impacts of overall diet on health that can be easily used by policymakers at the global/national levels are not readily available. Methods We developed the International Diet-Health Index (IDHI) to measure health impacts of dietary intake across 186 countries in 2010, using age-specific and sex-specific data on country-level …
Fortified blended flour supplements displace plain cereals in feeding of young children
Lipid-based nutritional supplements (LNS) and fortified blended flours (FBF) are widely used to increase the nutrient density of children's diets and improve their health, but their effectiveness could be modified by displacement of other foods. We reanalysed data from a cost-effectiveness trial comparing impacts on anthropometry of three FBFs (Corn Soy Blend Plus [CSB+], Corn Soy Whey Blend [CSWB], SuperCereal Plus [SC+]) and one LNS (Ready-to-u…
Can shorter mothers have taller children? Nutritional mobility, health equity and the intergenerational transmission of relative height
Cost and affordability of nutritious diets at retail prices
Many policies and programs aim to bring nutritious diets within reach of the poor. This paper uses retail prices and nutrient composition for 671 foods and beverages to compute the daily cost of essential nutrients required for an active and healthy life in 177 countries around the world. We compare this minimum cost of nutrient adequacy with the subsistence cost of dietary energy and per-capita spending on all goods and services, to identify sty…
First foods
Diet quality is closely linked to child growth and development, especially among infants aged 6-23 months who need to complement breastmilk with the gradual introduction of nutrient-rich solid foods. This paper links Demographic and Health Survey data on infant feeding to household and environmental factors for 76,641 children in 42 low- and middle-income countries surveyed in 2006-2013, providing novel stylized facts about diets in early childho…
Misreporting Month of Birth
A large literature has used children’s birthdays to identify exposure to shocks and estimate their impacts on later outcomes. Using height-for-age z scores (HAZ) for more than 990,000 children in 62 countries from 163 Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS), we show how random errors in birth dates create artifacts in HAZ that can be used to diagnose the extent of age misreporting. The most important artifact is an upward gradient in HAZ by recorded…
Agricultural Transformation, Nutrition Transition and Food Policy in Africa
This paper uses a Preston Curve approach to test for changes over time in agriculture, nutrition and food policy, comparing national averages in Africa and elsewhere at each level of national income per capita from the 1990s to the 2010s. Our statistical tests and data visualisations reveal that, at each level of income, African countries have faster rural population growth, a larger share of workers in agriculture and lower agricultural labour p…
Orange Fanta versus orange fruit
This paper introduces a novel survey instrument to identify distinct components of nutrition knowledge and test for links between knowledge and dietary choices in Southern Malawi. Our first aim is to distinguish respondents' familiarity with recommended behaviours, such as when to start breastfeeding or introduce solid foods, from respondents' factual knowledge about mechanisms, such as whether biscuits or papaya and orange fruit or orange Fanta …
Education and micronutrient deficiencies
While relationships between maternal schooling and micronutrient outcomes vary around the globe, more schooling is generally linked to lower rates of deficiency. These findings draw policy-relevant connections between formal education and anemia and micronutrient status globally. It is necessary to examine the mechanisms through which this relationship may be working at both household and country level
Performance bonuses in the public sector
We conduct a randomized trial to compare incentives for improved child outcomes among salaried caregivers in Chandigarh, India. A contest whose prize is divided among workers in proportion to measured gains yielded more improvement than a winner-take-all program. In our population of about 2000 children served by 85 workers, using proportional rewards led to weight-for-age malnutrition rates that were 4.3 percentage points lower at 3 months (when…
Designing programs to improve diets for maternal and child health
Improving maternal and child nutrition in resource-poor settings requires effective use of limited resources, but priority-setting is constrained by limited information about program costs and impacts, especially for interventions designed to improve diet quality. This study utilized a mixed methods approach to identify, describe and estimate the potential costs and impacts on child dietary intake of 12 nutrition-sensitive programs in Ethiopia, N…
Priority interventions to improve maternal and child diets in S ub‐ S aharan A frica and S outh A sia
Nutrition-sensitive interventions to improve overall diet quality are increasingly needed to improve maternal and child health. This study demonstrates feasibility of a structured process to leverage local expertise in formulating programmes tailored for current circumstances in South Asia and Africa. We assembled 41 stakeholders in 2 regional workshops and followed a prespecified protocol to elicit programme designs listing the human and other r…
Nutrient composition of premixed and packaged complementary foods for sale in low‐ and middle‐income countries
Premixed flours for infant porridge are increasingly produced and sold in developing countries to complement continued breastfeeding. Such complementary food (CF) products have known efficacy against malnutrition in children from 6 to 24 months of age, but ingredient ratios and production processes may vary. This study provides the first systematic measurement of their actual nutrient composition. We purchased samples of 108 premixed CF products …
Climatic conditions and child height
Environmental conditions in early life are known to have impacts on later health outcomes, but causal mechanisms and potential remedies have been difficult to discern. This paper uses the Nepal Demographic and Health Surveys of 2006 and 2011, combined with earlier NASA satellite observations of variation in the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) at each child's location and time of birth to identify the trimesters of gestation and peri…
Disease control, demographic change and institutional development in Africa
Does Child Undernutrition Persist Despite Poverty Reduction in Developing Countries? Quantile Regression Results
The eradication of child undernutrition and extreme poverty are important objectives for most societies. Countries with higher national incomes usually improve in both dimensions, but not always at the same rate. Using quantile regression, we show that poverty rates tend to decline with increased income at a roughly constant elasticity. In contrast, while the prevalence of child wasting declines at that same elasticity where it is most widespread…
Effects and determinants of mild underweight among preschool children across countries and over time
The Role of Leaders in Democratic Deliberations
Despite a widespread trend toward the adoption of increasingly participatory approaches to political decision making in developing countries, there is little or no evidence that these practices in fact return the benefits attributed to them. This article investigates one specific worry—that participatory decision-making processes may be vulnerable to manipulation by elites. The authors report on a field experiment, drawing on a unique nationwide …
A market-based approach to child nutrition
The Role of Leaders in Democratic Deliberations
Despite a widespread trend toward the adoption of increasingly participatory approaches to political decision making in developing countries, there is little or no evidence that these practices in fact return the benefits attributed to them. This article investigates one specific worry—that participatory decision-making processes may be vulnerable to manipulation by elites. The authors report on a field experiment, drawing on a unique nationwide …
Misreporting Month of Birth
A large literature has used children’s birthdays to identify exposure to shocks and estimate their impacts on later outcomes. Using height-for-age z scores (HAZ) for more than 990,000 children in 62 countries from 163 Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS), we show how random errors in birth dates create artifacts in HAZ that can be used to diagnose the extent of age misreporting. The most important artifact is an upward gradient in HAZ by recorded…
Cost and affordability of nutritious diets at retail prices
Many policies and programs aim to bring nutritious diets within reach of the poor. This paper uses retail prices and nutrient composition for 671 foods and beverages to compute the daily cost of essential nutrients required for an active and healthy life in 177 countries around the world. We compare this minimum cost of nutrient adequacy with the subsistence cost of dietary energy and per-capita spending on all goods and services, to identify sty…
First foods
Diet quality is closely linked to child growth and development, especially among infants aged 6-23 months who need to complement breastmilk with the gradual introduction of nutrient-rich solid foods. This paper links Demographic and Health Survey data on infant feeding to household and environmental factors for 76,641 children in 42 low- and middle-income countries surveyed in 2006-2013, providing novel stylized facts about diets in early childho…
Trade policy reform, retail food prices and access to healthy diets worldwide
Recent use of least-cost diets as a measure of global food security revealed that over 3 billion people are unable to afford sufficient nutritious food for an active and healthy life, driving demand for policy changes to improve access and affordability. This study quantifies the role of imports in consumer prices, matching retail prices in 144 countries to imports by origin of the item or its main ingredient, resulting in a total of 13,846 pairs…
Disease control, demographic change and institutional development in Africa
Tracking the affordability of least-cost healthy diets helps guide intervention for food security and improved nutrition
A market-based approach to child nutrition
Designing programs to improve diets for maternal and child health
Improving maternal and child nutrition in resource-poor settings requires effective use of limited resources, but priority-setting is constrained by limited information about program costs and impacts, especially for interventions designed to improve diet quality. This study utilized a mixed methods approach to identify, describe and estimate the potential costs and impacts on child dietary intake of 12 nutrition-sensitive programs in Ethiopia, N…
Panterritorial versus regional pricing for maize in Zimbabwe
The Pleasure Bond
Panterritorial versus regional pricing for maize in Zimbabwe
Government and Agriculture in Zimbabwe
Seeds for African Peasants
Measuring exchange rate misalignment
A market-based approach to child nutrition
The Role of Leaders in Democratic Deliberations
Despite a widespread trend toward the adoption of increasingly participatory approaches to political decision making in developing countries, there is little or no evidence that these practices in fact return the benefits attributed to them. This article investigates one specific worry—that participatory decision-making processes may be vulnerable to manipulation by elites. The authors report on a field experiment, drawing on a unique nationwide …
Effects and determinants of mild underweight among preschool children across countries and over time
Does Child Undernutrition Persist Despite Poverty Reduction in Developing Countries? Quantile Regression Results
The eradication of child undernutrition and extreme poverty are important objectives for most societies. Countries with higher national incomes usually improve in both dimensions, but not always at the same rate. Using quantile regression, we show that poverty rates tend to decline with increased income at a roughly constant elasticity. In contrast, while the prevalence of child wasting declines at that same elasticity where it is most widespread…
Disease control, demographic change and institutional development in Africa
Nutrient composition of premixed and packaged complementary foods for sale in low‐ and middle‐income countries
Premixed flours for infant porridge are increasingly produced and sold in developing countries to complement continued breastfeeding. Such complementary food (CF) products have known efficacy against malnutrition in children from 6 to 24 months of age, but ingredient ratios and production processes may vary. This study provides the first systematic measurement of their actual nutrient composition. We purchased samples of 108 premixed CF products …
Climatic conditions and child height
Environmental conditions in early life are known to have impacts on later health outcomes, but causal mechanisms and potential remedies have been difficult to discern. This paper uses the Nepal Demographic and Health Surveys of 2006 and 2011, combined with earlier NASA satellite observations of variation in the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) at each child's location and time of birth to identify the trimesters of gestation and peri…
Priority interventions to improve maternal and child diets in S ub‐ S aharan A frica and S outh A sia
Nutrition-sensitive interventions to improve overall diet quality are increasingly needed to improve maternal and child health. This study demonstrates feasibility of a structured process to leverage local expertise in formulating programmes tailored for current circumstances in South Asia and Africa. We assembled 41 stakeholders in 2 regional workshops and followed a prespecified protocol to elicit programme designs listing the human and other r…
Agricultural Transformation, Nutrition Transition and Food Policy in Africa
This paper uses a Preston Curve approach to test for changes over time in agriculture, nutrition and food policy, comparing national averages in Africa and elsewhere at each level of national income per capita from the 1990s to the 2010s. Our statistical tests and data visualisations reveal that, at each level of income, African countries have faster rural population growth, a larger share of workers in agriculture and lower agricultural labour p…
Orange Fanta versus orange fruit
This paper introduces a novel survey instrument to identify distinct components of nutrition knowledge and test for links between knowledge and dietary choices in Southern Malawi. Our first aim is to distinguish respondents' familiarity with recommended behaviours, such as when to start breastfeeding or introduce solid foods, from respondents' factual knowledge about mechanisms, such as whether biscuits or papaya and orange fruit or orange Fanta …
Education and micronutrient deficiencies
While relationships between maternal schooling and micronutrient outcomes vary around the globe, more schooling is generally linked to lower rates of deficiency. These findings draw policy-relevant connections between formal education and anemia and micronutrient status globally. It is necessary to examine the mechanisms through which this relationship may be working at both household and country level
Performance bonuses in the public sector
We conduct a randomized trial to compare incentives for improved child outcomes among salaried caregivers in Chandigarh, India. A contest whose prize is divided among workers in proportion to measured gains yielded more improvement than a winner-take-all program. In our population of about 2000 children served by 85 workers, using proportional rewards led to weight-for-age malnutrition rates that were 4.3 percentage points lower at 3 months (when…
Designing programs to improve diets for maternal and child health
Improving maternal and child nutrition in resource-poor settings requires effective use of limited resources, but priority-setting is constrained by limited information about program costs and impacts, especially for interventions designed to improve diet quality. This study utilized a mixed methods approach to identify, describe and estimate the potential costs and impacts on child dietary intake of 12 nutrition-sensitive programs in Ethiopia, N…
First foods
Diet quality is closely linked to child growth and development, especially among infants aged 6-23 months who need to complement breastmilk with the gradual introduction of nutrient-rich solid foods. This paper links Demographic and Health Survey data on infant feeding to household and environmental factors for 76,641 children in 42 low- and middle-income countries surveyed in 2006-2013, providing novel stylized facts about diets in early childho…
Misreporting Month of Birth
A large literature has used children’s birthdays to identify exposure to shocks and estimate their impacts on later outcomes. Using height-for-age z scores (HAZ) for more than 990,000 children in 62 countries from 163 Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS), we show how random errors in birth dates create artifacts in HAZ that can be used to diagnose the extent of age misreporting. The most important artifact is an upward gradient in HAZ by recorded…
Affordability of the EAT–Lancet reference diet
BACKGROUND: The EAT-Lancet Commission drew on all available nutritional and environmental evidence to construct the first global benchmark diet capable of sustaining health and protecting the planet, but it did not assess dietary affordability. We used food price and household income data to estimate affordability of EAT-Lancet benchmark diets, as a first step to guiding interventions to improve diets around the world. METHODS: We obtained retail…
The International Diet-Health Index
Introduction Diet is a major modifiable risk factor for cardiometabolic disease; however, interpretable measures capturing impacts of overall diet on health that can be easily used by policymakers at the global/national levels are not readily available. Methods We developed the International Diet-Health Index (IDHI) to measure health impacts of dietary intake across 186 countries in 2010, using age-specific and sex-specific data on country-level …
Fortified blended flour supplements displace plain cereals in feeding of young children
Lipid-based nutritional supplements (LNS) and fortified blended flours (FBF) are widely used to increase the nutrient density of children's diets and improve their health, but their effectiveness could be modified by displacement of other foods. We reanalysed data from a cost-effectiveness trial comparing impacts on anthropometry of three FBFs (Corn Soy Blend Plus [CSB+], Corn Soy Whey Blend [CSWB], SuperCereal Plus [SC+]) and one LNS (Ready-to-u…
Can shorter mothers have taller children? Nutritional mobility, health equity and the intergenerational transmission of relative height
Cost and affordability of nutritious diets at retail prices
Many policies and programs aim to bring nutritious diets within reach of the poor. This paper uses retail prices and nutrient composition for 671 foods and beverages to compute the daily cost of essential nutrients required for an active and healthy life in 177 countries around the world. We compare this minimum cost of nutrient adequacy with the subsistence cost of dietary energy and per-capita spending on all goods and services, to identify sty…
Child Nutrition and Water Access (18 obras) · Economics (18 obras) · Medicine (18 obras) · Environmental health (16 obras) · Business (10 obras) · Economic growth (10 obras) · Geography (9 obras) · Poverty, Education, and Child Welfare (9 obras) · Agriculture (8 obras) · Demography (8 obras)