service delivery, and the phasing in of the program reflected this constraint. The NGO, and more specifically the animator who is in charge of supervising and providing support to the community nutrition worker, needed to be able to reach the sites regularly by motorbike. Once the community was eligible and decided to participate, an ACN was locally elected and provided an initial intense training by the provincial directors.<sup>10</sup> In the current design of the community program (PNC), a site is planned to have a maximum number of 225 children (below the age of three). Everybody in the community is eligible to participate in the site activities.

# **3. The Data and Descriptive Evidence**

A baseline household survey was fielded in the months of April and July of 1997 and 1998 by the National Institute of Statistics (INSTAT-DDSS), in all but three districts of the country.<sup>11</sup> The survey was administered to about 14,000 households.<sup>12</sup> The objective of the baseline survey was to obtain a sufficiently precise estimate of the incidence of malnutrition at the district level, so as to target the intervention in the districts with an incidence of moderate underweight above the national average. As a consequence, a shorter large scale survey was required, collecting anthropometric information as well as the education of the mother and the occupation of the head of the household. Anthropometric measures were recorded for children 6 to 59 months as well as for all women 15-49 in the sample.

A follow-up, nationally representative anthropometric survey was administered in 2004 in the same season as in the 1997/98 sample.<sup>13</sup> In order to be able to control for both observed and unobserved community level characteristics in the evaluation, the survey was planned to be administered to the same communities (Fokontany) interviewed during the baseline survey, thereby creating a longitudinal panel at the community level. About one-third (154 out of 420) of the communities at baseline were subsequently selected for the program.

> 10 Note that we are using communities and program sites interchangeably. A site is identified by its geographical delimitation (of a radius of five kilometers, within the commune boundaries). A site generally comprises 1 to 3 villages. The boundaries were set to minimize the transport (direct and indirect) cost of joining the site activities by mothers as well as to minimize the burden for the community worker.

> 11 The district comprising the capital (Antananarivo) and two other districts (Kandreho, and Benenitra) not surveyed during the baseline were subsequently added to the follow-up survey, to achieve national coverage. 12 The survey used clustered based sampling, with three strata that varied according to location (rural/urban) and population size. In the first stage a random sample of 420 communities (Fokontany) was drawn within each district. In the second stage, a census of all households was conducted and a random draw of 35 households containing at least one child aged 0-5 and/or a pregnant woman was selected.

> 13 Forty-six clusters/communities were added in 2004, to include the three districts not interviewed at baseline and ensure national representation. We disregard them from the analysis.

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