Structured Food Vouchers Boost Nutrition for Poor Filipino Families, ADB Study Finds

The ADB–WFP–AFD randomized trial shows that structured electronic food vouchers significantly increased food spending, dietary diversity, and child health among poor Filipino households, with the strongest gains in protein and fruit-vegetable consumption. It concludes that redesigning voucher allocations, improving nutrition education, and allowing more frequent redemption could greatly enhance national scale-up under the Walang Gutom program.

The randomized trial carried out by the Asian Development Bank (ADB) in partnership with the World Food Programme (WFP) and Agence Française de Développement (AFD) provides one of the clearest examinations to date of how structured electronic food vouchers could reshape social protection in the Philippines. Designed to guide the national Walang Gutom 2027 Food Stamp Program, the study tracked 4,883 households across Manila’s dense urban district of Tondo and rural areas in Isabela, Camarines Sur, Surigao del Norte, and Maguindanao del Norte, offering a rare and rigorous look at how poverty-targeted food vouchers change what families can afford to eat.

A New Approach to Tackling Food Insecurity

Households assigned to the program received PHP 3,000 monthly via electronic benefit cards, with spending tightly structured, half for carbohydrates, 30% for protein, and 20% for fruits and vegetables, and redemption allowed only at accredited retailers. Before each redemption, beneficiaries attended nutrition education sessions aimed at strengthening knowledge and habits. The program design was unusually restrictive compared with typical cash transfers, making the trial an important test of whether structured vouchers could overcome the Philippines’ persistent nutritional shortfalls.

Families Spent More and Ate Better, Especially Proteins and Produce

The most immediate outcome was a sharp rise in food spending. Beneficiary households increased monthly food expenditures by an average of PHP 1,692, with no evidence of price inflation at participating retailers. The strongest spending boosts came in the voucher’s most nutritionally important categories: protein purchases rose by 21%, and fruits and vegetables by 36%. Carbohydrates increased more modestly, partly because households already devoted much of their budget to staples like rice, making that part of the voucher essentially a substitute for previous spending. The study’s data clearly show that households respond most strongly to allocations for foods they previously consumed too little of.

Nutrition Education Shifted Attitudes More Than Knowledge

Although nutrition sessions were mandatory, they produced subtle rather than transformative changes. Objective knowledge scores barely moved, but attitudes did: participants expressed stronger agreement that food choices directly affect both adult and child health. This suggests that while current sessions succeed in boosting awareness, they may need deeper or more practical content to meaningfully shift nutrition literacy. The researchers note that pairing vouchers with stronger behavior change efforts could amplify dietary benefits.

Small but Meaningful Improvements in Hunger and Child Health

Overall hunger declined among participating households. Reports of frequent hunger fell from 15% in the control group to around 12% among beneficiaries, and moderate-to-severe food insecurity also eased slightly. Yet even with the voucher, average food spending remained about 26% below the minimum cost of a healthy diet in the Philippines, highlighting that PHP 3,000 cannot fully close affordability gaps.

The most compelling effects appeared among young children. For those under five, especially girls, illness rates dropped markedly. Fever cases decreased by 23%, coughs and colds by 17%, and diarrhea by roughly a third. These health gains likely resulted from better access to high-value foods coupled with hygiene messages delivered through the nutrition sessions. However, short-term recall measures showed no clear improvement in children’s dietary diversity, underscoring the known difficulty of capturing nutritional changes through surveys.

Where and for Whom the Program Worked Best

Urban households in Tondo benefited the most, thanks to closer proximity to retailers and far better access to refrigerators, critical for storing perishable proteins and produce. Households with higher baseline nutrition knowledge and those already receiving 4Ps conditional cash transfers showed larger gains in food security and child health, suggesting strong complementarities between cash transfers and food vouchers. Smaller households enjoyed greater per-capita benefits, and families surveyed soon after redemption exhibited markedly better dietary diversity, highlighting how monthly redemption cycles limit sustained improvements.