Re­search

The Economics of Infant Feeding: A Learning Agenda

Executive Summary

What are the long-term con­se­quences of dif­fer­ent types of in­fant feed­ing? What in­flu­ences par­ents’ de­ci­sions about how to feed their chil­dren? Which mar­ket and so­cial forces are at play in the mar­ket for in­fant nu­tri­tion? These are all ques­tions that we, at the Lars­son-Rosen­quist Foun­da­tion Cen­ter for Eco­nom­ics of Breast­feed­ing (LRF CEB) at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Zurich, seek an­swers to.

The LRF CEB aims to con­tribute ev­i­dence on the eco­nom­ic as­pects of in­fant nu­tri­tion. In ad­di­tion to pur­su­ing our own re­search, we aim to sup­port ear­ly-ca­reer re­searchers by pro­vid­ing seed fund­ing for nov­el projects on the eco­nom­ics of in­fant nu­tri­tion and ear­ly child de­vel­op­ment. The goal of this White Pa­per is to pro­vide in­spi­ra­tion by lay­ing out open, pol­i­cy-rel­e­vant ques­tions re­lat­ing to the eco­nom­ics of in­fant nu­tri­tion, with a fo­cus on breast­feed­ing.

With this doc­u­ment, we hope to stim­u­late re­search with­in the eco­nom­ics of in­fant nu­tri­tion. We high­light sev­er­al open ques­tions, gen­er­at­ed as part of a work­shop with ex­perts in eco­nom­ics and epi­demi­ol­o­gy, which we deem to be eco­nom­i­cal­ly in­ter­est­ing, pol­i­cy-rel­e­vant and with high im­pact po­ten­tial. These ques­tions cov­er a range of top­ics, from im­prov­ing our un­der­stand­ing of par­ents’ be­liefs about the re­turns to dif­fer­ent modes of in­fant feed­ing, to un­cov­er­ing the role of so­cial im­age con­cerns in in­fant nu­tri­tion choic­es, to in­ves­ti­gat­ing what sys­tem­at­ic mar­ket fail­ures ex­ist in the mar­ket for in­fant nu­tri­tion, and un­der­stand­ing the re­la­tion­ship be­tween breast­feed­ing, gen­der equal­i­ty and fe­male em­pow­er­ment. Im­por­tant­ly, these ques­tions fo­cus not only on chil­dren but also on par­ents, es­pe­cial­ly moth­ers, and the trade-offs in­volved in dif­fer­ent in­fant feed­ing de­ci­sions. We hope this White Pa­per pro­vides in­spi­ra­tion for fu­ture work with­in this fas­ci­nat­ing area. We have ear­marked funds for ex­ter­nal projects on the eco­nom­ics of in­fant nu­tri­tion and in­vite pro­pos­als for rel­e­vant re­search as part of our Pro­ject De­vel­op­ment Fel­low­ship call.

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