Impact of productive safety net program on food security of beneficiary households in western Ethiopia: A matching estimator approach.

From various Ethiopian government food security strategies, the Productive Safety Net Program (PSNP) is one of the strategies to improve households' consumption. As a result, the government needs to know the outcome of the program intervention for further decisions in similar poverty reduction strategies. This study examined the impact of Productive Safety Net Program intervention on food security of rural households in rural western Ethiopia. A cross-sectional survey data were gathered from a total of randomly selected 188 beneficiary and non-beneficiary sample households. Key informants interviews and focus group discussions were employed to triangulate household survey results. A Chi-square test was employed to compare the households' food security status. The propensity score matching method was used to evaluate the impact of a Productive safety net on beneficiary households' food security status. In this study, the Productive Safety net program has significantly increased households' calorie intake. The beneficiaries' households were more food secure than non-beneficiary households by 68% and54% respectively. The mean energy available for the beneficiary and non-beneficiary households is 2488.500 and 2153.394 kcal, respectively. Estimates of the average treatment effect of the treated indicated that a Productive safety net program can impact households food security by 2519.29348 kilocalories, higher in the kernel matching method. This is an encouraging indicator for Programme implementers and funding agents. Therefore, channeling further efforts on this indicator is important for a more pronounced impact of the Programme. Given a certain level of variations of different program impact studies, this study recommends further research with greater scope and at different locations on the impact of PSNP and related Food Security Programs on households' food security status.

Introduction

Food insecurity is a persistent concern for many countries in the world [1]. The sustainable development goals (SDGs) cover all social, economic, and environmental wings of sustainability. Specifically, SDG-2 aims to End hunger, realize food security and enhanced nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture [2].

Ethiopia is among the severely food-insecure, drought and famine-affected nations in Sub-Saharan Africa. The majority of Ethiopia’s nations are affected by persistent and cyclical food insecurity [3]. Smallholder agriculture has long served as the dominant economic activity for people in sub-Saharan Africa [4], and this is also true in Ethiopia.

The rural smallholder farmers are the most affected [5] where a large number of households cannot produce or buy enough food to cover their annual food needs even under normal weather and market conditions [6]. Because of this problem, the Ethiopian Government in partnership with global donors introduced the Productive Safety Net Programme (PSNP) in 2005. The aim is to link direct relief with development and focus on reducing vulnerability and create enabling conditions for the rural poor households [7]. There are different studies on the impact of PSNP impact of PSNP on child’s time spent on schooling and work like [8], saving of assets [9, 10]. However, none of these studies have studied the impact of PSNP on households consumption. Thus, the objective of this study is to assess the impact of a productive safety net program on the food security of beneficiary households in western Ethiopia. Specifically, the study will answer two research questions: how are the existing food security status of beneficiary and non-beneficiary households and how is the impact of the PSNP intervention on the beneficiary households in western Ethiopia.

Literature review

Globally, 821 million people are undernourished. Of these 257 million are in Africa, of whom 237 million are in sub-Saharan Africa [11]. Ethiopia has suffered a long history of successive droughts and famines in its modern history. The years; 1952, 1959, 1965, 1972, 1973, 1978, 1984, 1991, 1994, 1999 and 2002 were dry years [12]. Almost 8 million people are expected for food aid every year and millions more suffer from seasonal food shortages and malnutrition. To overcome the problem of food insecurity in the country, the Ethiopian Government in collaboration with a consortium of donors introduced the Productive Safety Net Programme (PSNP) in 2005. The objective is to link relief with development and focus on reducing vulnerability and [13] create enabling conditions for the rural poor.

There are similar studies in the PSNP at Kebribeyah District of Somali Regional State of Ethiopia [14], and in Bale Zone [15]. However, these studies used only PSNP participants before the intervention and after the intervention of the program without evaluating the non-beneficiaries food security status leading to the counterfactual problem. However, the same respondents recall is often incorrect since it is hard to remember all past incidents correctly, resulting in over or under-reporting of past incidents that lead to recall bias [16]. Besides, these previous studies did not control the other factors that could affect the food security status of the households. This is because it relied on simple descriptive statistics alone. The majority of previous studies on the impact of PSNP was also conducted at the country level to assess its general impact [17-19]. Whereas, at the local level, there is inadequate empirical evidence on the program impact on the expected outcomes, particularly on the Productive safety net program beneficiary households’ food security. The main research question for this research is how is the impact of productive safety net program on the food security of beneficiary households.

There is difficulty in finding reliable data on food security which is having the problem for policymakers and researchers [20]. Therefore, the results of this research will contribute to a growing project impact evaluation literature in at least two ways. The first input of the article identifies the causal effect of a comprehensive food security program on household’s consumptions in similar income settings in different parts of Ethiopia.

The second contribution of the results of the research is its use of major determinants variables of food security status of the study households which could be documented as evidence for the diverse intervention of the poverty reduction programs. The primary empirical data sources for this study were a cross-sectional survey of 2019 households from Western Ethiopia, Oromia Regional State, Sire District.

The food security profile of Ethiopia

For several years in the past, Ethiopia has been known as a country that is highly dependent on emergency food aid to its widespread and persistent food insecurity. This humanitarian aid was estimated at US$265 million per year on average between 1997 and 2002 and saved many lives. However, the program end-line impact evaluations have shown that it was unpredictable for both planners and households, and often arrived too little for the target. The setbacks and irregularities of the program meant that the humanitarian aid could not be used effectively and did little or no to protect household livelihoods, maintain environmental degradation, generate communal resources, and household assets [21].

Before the inception of the PSNP, aid schemes such as emergency food aid, Food-for-Work, and Employment Generation Scheme were used as social protection programs in Ethiopia [22]. However, after the severe droughts of 2002/03, there was extreme hunger in Ethiopia and this leads the government to decide to supplement the existing poverty reduction response systems, and the Employment Generation Scheme, with more certainty and sustainable solution to end poverty and reduce the vulnerability of households to food insecurity. To this end, the Food Security improvement Program with different components was endorsed in 2005 under the Ethiopian Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development [22]. In particular, in collaboration with development partners, the government of Ethiopia initiated a component of food security program with the name Productive Safety Net Program [8] in the same year as a social protection program that makes people’s livelihoods more secure [23, 24].

Program description

The Ethiopian productive safety net program was aimed to cover around two hundred sixty-three districts in the four regions, namely Amhara, Tigray, Oromia and Southern Nations Nationalities and People’s, that had been significant recipients of food aid between 2002 and 2004 and operate as a safety net by providing transfers to 4.5 million beneficiaries via either pubic work or direct support [25]. A recent report shows that around 7.8 million eligible households in the country are enrolled in the program [26]. The PSNP provides a minimum of five days of payment per month for six months when there is a low agricultural production season for at least the next five years. A member of the targeted household for the public work employment gets 50 birr9 (US$2.80) or 15kg of grain per month [27]. The type of transfer can be in kind (food), in cash or can be a combination of both; it depends on the transfer that the donors have made. Nonetheless, the transfers are set at a level to smooth out food insecure households consumption to close the food gap over the annual food shortage months. However, due to the high inflation rate, adjustments to the wage rates were made over the period of the program and participants received Birr 8 in 2008 and Birr 10 per day in 2010 [28].

Agriculture is the main engine of Ethiopian Economy which includes crop production and livestock [29]. Since the main aim of PSNP is to safeguard a minimum level of food consumption and enhance livestock accumulation of the needy households, the beneficiaries are expected to graduate from the program once they have achieved better livelihoods and become food secure. The support from another component of food secure program, namely household asset building program that provides microcredit and agricultural extension services to diversify income sources and increase productive assets of the participants will also continue after graduation [25, 28].

Program impact evaluation is the process of examining the achievement level of a given poverty reduction program and its desired changes to the participants. It is aimed at sorting out the net impact of a program intervention on the participants that can be attributable solely to that specific intervention. It is the act of assessing outcomes in the short, medium or long term change due to an intervention [30]. Program impact evaluation is a matter of studying whether the changes in the well-being of households are certainly due to the program intervention and not to other factors [31]. Sire District is among the identified Districts for productive safety net program intervention. The program was launched in the District in 2006 and no known assessment of the intervention has been made. This study was initiated to assess the impact of the Productive Safety net program for further policy recommendation in Ethiopia and countries having related poverty reduction strategies.

Methodology

Description of the study area

Ethiopia is the 27th largest country in the world with a total size of 1,126,829 square kilometers. Its neighboring countries in East Africa include Sudan and South Sudan to the west, Djibouti and Eritrea to the north, Djibouti and Somalia to the east, and Kenya to the south [32].

This study was conducted in Sire District in the Oromia region, which is among the ten regional states in Ethiopia. The study area was delineated into lowland, mid-land and high land. The study District has two rainy seasons: a long rainy season, locally called kiremt (June to August); and a short rainy season, locally called belg from March to May. Kiremt is the major growing season in the study area. Mixed farming dominates the livelihoods of the community in the study area [33] which is similar to the major parts of the country [34, 35].

The greater majority of the households living in the District is engaged in subsistence mixed crop production and livestock rearing. The main food sources for households in this livelihood area are rain-fed agriculture products such as wheat, barley, bean and maize, livestock products like milk, butter, meat [33]. Eighty-Seven percent of the population reside in rural Kebeles(The lowest administrative unit next to district) where this study was conducted. Sire District has 25 rural kebeles. The District has a total population of 102,447, out of which 51,019 were males and 51,428 were females [36].

Methods and sources of data collection

This empirical analysis was implemented using primary data which were collected through a scheduled survey of 188households. A three-stage sampling technique was used to select the final sampled households. Firstly, Sire District was purposively chosen based on its wide coverage of the PSNP and vulnerability of communities to food insecurity. In the second stage, among a total of 13 PSNP beneficiary kebeles, Bele, and Allu Kebeles were randomly selected. The households in these Kebeles were classified into 2 strata (beneficiary and non-beneficiary). Finally, by using a proportionate sampling method, 94 beneficiaries and 94 non-beneficiary households were selected using simple random sampling procedure. The list of household heads for both beneficiary and the non-beneficiary groups were obtained from the lists available in each of the selected kebeles as as a sampling frame. The study used samples of beneficiary households as the treatment group and non-beneficiary households as the control group.

Data was collected through a structured questionnaire. The household questionnaire was primed in the English language and then interpreted into the local language. A pre-test was done by taking 5% of the total sample size from both PSNP beneficiaries and non-beneficiary households. The pre-test participants were out of the target Kebeles and not involved in the actual survey. Necessary amendments were made based on the comments obtained from the pre-test schedule survey. Four enumerators who are experienced in the socioeconomic survey were employed and introduced to the aim and purpose of the study. The actual schedule survey was carried in November and December 2019. Secondary data was also collected from relevant office records as well as published and unpublished sources. These include the study District office reports, District performance reports, and central statistics agency publications.

Designing the outcome variables: Household calorie intake

Food security has a multidimensional character [37]. This implies that the identification of relevant food security indicators is difficult. Outcome indicators are proxies for food consumption measured either directly as food expenditure and caloric intake or indirectly through anthropometric indicators [38]. Whereas, process indicators reflect the status of food security and the level of vulnerability to food insecurity [39]. The calorie intake indicator is the principal variable used to define food poverty by the Ethiopian government [40]. In this study, food calorie intake was employed as an outcome variable.

A household schedule survey was used to construct the food calorie intake variable at the household level. Respondents were asked to recall food types consumed from home production, purchases and or gift loans/wages in kind and the amount the last fourteen days preceding the household survey. The physical food amount consumed by a household was converted into calories. This was also adjusted for household age and sex and followed four steps. Firstly, the local measurement units were converted into a common unit of measurement for each food item consumed by a household. Secondly, the food items consumed by households were transformed into calories using the Ethiopian food composition table designed by National Health and Nutrition Research Institute [41]. Thirdly, food calories consumed by households were summed up and converted into daily amounts. Lastly, the combined food calories were adjusted in an adult equivalent unit per household.

The amount of energy in kilocalories available for the households was recorded then the results weighed against the minimum requirement per adult equivalent per day 2100kcal. Those households who consumed below minimum requirement were classified as food insecure while those beyond and equal to the threshold were categorized as food secure. The households calorie intake was compared with the national average daily caloric intake requirements for a moderately active adult (≤ 2100 kcal) to know the food security status of the productive safety net program participant households in the study area. Based on this information, those households who met the above-estimated caloric requirement were classified as food secure and otherwise as non-food secure.

Data analysis

The data entry was done by using excel and exported into STATA (version15) and then the analysis of data was undertaken through descriptive statistics and econometric models. Descriptive statistical techniques such as mean, percentage, and standard deviation were applied to describe the socio-economic characteristics of respondents. In addition to this, descriptive tools such as charts and tables were illustrated to present data.

Specification of Propensity Score Matching (PSM) model

The pros and cons of the different non-experimental methods for impact evaluation were discussed by Blundell and Costa Dias [42, 43]. In our study area, there was no baseline data before the program intervention of the PSNP. Therefore propensity score matching was employed which is usually ideal to evaluate the impact of productive safety net program on the beneficiaries when there is no baseline data [44]. When there is baseline data and follow-up survey data, a more robust procedure for impact evaluation would be difference in difference (DIDI) in combination with PSM [42, 43]. Thus, this study applied a propensity score matching (PSM) which could identify comparable treatment and comparison controls using cross-sectional household data based on [45].

Choosing a matching algorithm. Despite the existence of plenty of methods to do so, only three of them get attention [46]. Three matching algorithms commonly used, namely nearest neighbour matching, radius matching, and kernel-based matching were implemented to evaluate the impact of PSNP on households food security to match the treated and control observations. To choose the best matching estimator for the analysis, different guiding criteria based on Dehejia and Wahba like the equal means test referred to as the balancing test, low Pseudo R2, and high matched sample size were taken into consideration [46]. Finally, kernel matching was used for this study analysis.

This study tried to maintain essential pre-conditions suggested by Heckman and Ichimura [47]. As a result, data were calculated using the same questionnaires for both treated and untreated groups, treated and comparison controls share similar socioeconomic, demographic and agro-ecological settings. Relevant variables related to treatment and outcome were included in the PSM function(Table 1).

Table 1

Variable description and measurement.

Variable	Type and description	Measurement
		1 if yes,0 otherwise
Dependent variable: TREATMENT Independent variables:	Dummy, participation in PSNP
AGEHH	Continuous, age of household head	Number of years
SEXHH	Dummy, Sex of household head	1if male,0 otherwise
FAMSIZE	Continuous, family size	Number of household members
LAB FORCE	Continuous, adult labour force of age 15–64 years	Number of the active labour force
EDUHH	Continuous, education of household head	Years completed
LADSIZE	Continuous, total land size	Hectare
NONACT	Dummy, non-farm activities	1 if yes,, 0 otherwise
TOTAL-TLU	Continuous, total livestock	Tropical livestock units
OXN	Continuous, Oxen owned	Number of oxen
ACCEXT	Dummy, access to extension service	1 if yes,0 otherwise
ACCCRD	Dummy, access to credit	1 if yes,0 otherwise
NUMBMO	Continuous, food gap faced	Number of months per year,

Source: Household Survey 2019.

Results and discussion

Tables 2 and 3 show, PSNP and non-PSNP households had a statistically significant difference in terms of cultivated land size, total livestock unit, household food gap in a month, marital status, credit access. Non-beneficiary households are better off on these factors than beneficiary households. This is plausible since most of the beneficiaries were targeted for PSNP didn’t have large farmland and major livestock assets. However, the number of family size, the household age in year and availability of labour force, there was no statistical difference between the two groups.

Table 2

Summarized descriptive statistics of sample households.

Variables	PSNP households		Non-PSNP households		Difference in means	t- value
	Mean	STD	Mean	STD	Mean
Age of HH	45.106	18.2229	40.989	13.6417	-4.1170	-1.754
HH Family size	4.202	1.7387	4.106	2.0079	-.0957	-0.3495
land size (ha)	0.7223404	.468948	1.031915	.8872863	.310	2.9118***
Active labor force	2.617021	1.201311	2.87234	2.31514	0.255	0.9491
(TLU)	1.628	1.8138	2.723	3.3098	1.0957	2.815***
Food gap in month	4.234	1.2904	3.351	1.4196	-.8830	-4.4625***

***, and * stand for significance at the 1% and 10% levels, respectively.

Source: Computed based on Household Survey 2019.

Table 3

Categorical variables chi-square test.

Variable		Non-PSNP participant	PSNP- participant	Ch2	P-value
		N (%)	N (%)
Gender of the household head	Male	71(75.53)	60(63.83)	3.0465	0.081
	Female	23(24.47)	34(36.17)
Marital status	Single	4(4.26)	10(10.64)
	Married	79(84.04)	56(59.57)	13.9002	0.001 *
	Divorced	11(11.70)	28(29.79)
Education	Non-educated	57(60)	57(60)
	Educated	37(40)	37(40)	0.0000	1.000
Extension access	Yes	71(75)	77(82)	1.1432	0.289
	No	23(25)	17(18)
Credit access	Yes	22(23)	40(42)	7.7972	0.005 *
	No	72(77)	54(58)

* stand for significance at the 1%.

Source: Computed based on Household Survey 2019.

Households’ food security status

This study objective is used as a springboard to study the impact of PSNP intervention on beneficiary households. 42% of households were found to be unable to meet the minimum survival requirement or food insecure and 58% of households were found to meet the minimum energy requirements or food security (Table 4). The result also shows that the percentage of food secured beneficiaries households and food secured non-beneficiary households are 68% and48% respectively. Therefore, the greater part of food-insecure households was found to be in non-beneficiary households. A Chi-square test was employed to compare the beneficiary households’ food security status.

Table 4

Proportion of sample households’ food security status.

Households food security status
	Food secure(n = 109)	Food insecure(n = 79)	total(n = 188)
Beneficiary	64	30	94
	68%	32%	100%
Non-beneficiary	45	49	94
	48%	52%	100%
	X2 = 7.005***

Where *** indicated significance level at 1%.

Source: Computed based on Household Survey 2019.

The Pearson chi-square is found to be p<0.01 which is significant at a 1%level of significance (Table 5). The mean energy available for the beneficiary and non-beneficiary households is 2488.500 and 2153.394 kcal, respectively. So, the t-value reveals that there is a significant mean difference between the beneficiary and non-beneficiary households at a 1% level of significance (Table 5). Thus, the result reveals that there is a significant association between PSNP interventions and the food security status of households.

Table 5

Energy available per adult equivalent per day for sample households.

Energy available per AE in (Kcal)	PSN P beneficiaries		Non- PSN P		Mean. Difference	T- value	P-value
	Mean	SD	Mean	SD	Mean
	2488.500	1159.9464	2088.543	855.5304	-399.9574	-2.690***	0.008

Where *** indicated significance level at 1%.

Source: Computed based on Household Survey 2019.

Impact of PSNP on food security

The first part of the econometric analysis is the propensity score matching analysis to investigate the causal effect of the Productive safety net program on households food security. The balancing property is tested to confirm that individuals with the same propensity score have the same distribution of observable characteristics (Table 6).

Table 6

Estimation of propensity score through a probit regression model.

Treatment variable	Coef	Std.err	Z	p>z
Gender	-3417147	.2510744	-1.36	0.174
Marital status	-1238461	.2155667	-0.57	0.566
Age	.0252931	.0080197	-3.15	0.002
Education	.431874	.2356755	1.83	0.067
Family size	.0134191	.0646188	0.21	0.835
Labour	-0393968	.0619658	-0.64	0.525
Land size	-3989577	.1642282	-2.43	0.015
Oxen number	.0244243	.1427754	0.17	0.864
TLU	-0853543	.046574	-1.83	0.067
Access to credit	.4593664	.227838	2.02	0.044
Access extension	.4600552	.2702364	1.70	0.089
Off-farm	.5382483	.22878332	2.35	0.019
Food gap in month	.237187	.0778764	3.05	0.002
Con	-2.186331	.797949	-2.74	0.006
Probit regressionLR chi2(13) = 56.11 Probit > Chi2 = 0.0000  Pseudo R2 = 0.2153Log Likelihood = -102.25886			Number of observation = 188

Source: Computed based on Household Survey 2019.

Common support condition and bias reduction

To estimate the impact of PSNP on household food security predicted propensity score is used to match farmers with similar characteristics to compare the impact of PSNP on households’ food security. Only observations in the common support region matched with the other group considered and others should be out of further consideration(Rosenbaum and Rubin, 1983). Once the region of common support is identified, sample households that fall outside this region were dropped and the treatment effect cannot be estimated for these sample households. The region of common support selected was [.13898677, .97527122]. The common support region would then lie between .13898677 and .97527122 are not considered for the matching exercise (Fig 1). Moreover, this study applied a visual analysis of the density distribution of the propensity score in the two groups (treated and non-treated groups) to check overlap and common support before matching samples. The common support assumptions imply that the probability of receiving treatment for each possible value of the vector X is strictly within the unit interval that falls outside the region of the common support area would be dropped.

Fig 1

Common support region graph.

Source: Computed based on Household Survey 2019.

Choosing a matching algorithm

Despite the existence of plenty of methods, this study employed the three PSM estimators based on authors such as Deheija and Wahba, Caliendo and Sabir [46, 48]. Matching estimators like nearest neighbour matching, radius matching, and kernel-based matching algorisms were used to evaluate the impact of PSNP based on Leuven and Sianesi [49] with STATA15.

To choose the best matching estimator for the analysis different guiding criteria, such as equal means test referred to as the balancing test, low Pseudo R2 and matched sample size were taken into consideration. Thus, a matching estimator which balances all the explanatory variables that result in insignificant mean differences between the two groups, bearing low pseudo R2 value and results in a large matched sample size was taken as the best estimator. As it is illustrated in Table 7 kernel with all bandwidth estimators have resulted in the lowest pseudo value, well-balanced covariates and largest sample size by discarding only two households (2 treated and 0 control households) from the sample. Hence, only the results obtained from this estimator were presented and discussed.

Table 7

Performance of matching estimators using three criteria.

Matching Estimator	Performance criteria
	Balancing test	Pseudo R2	Matched Sample size
NN matching
NN matching without replacement(1neigboure)	8	0.2177	138
NN matching with replacement(1neigboure)	8	0.2177	185
Radius caliper
With 0.01 band width	8	0.2177	149
With 0.25 band width	8	0.2177	186
With 0.5 band width	8	0.2177	186
Kernel matching
With 0.01 band width	8	0.2177	186*
With 0.25 band width	8	0.2177	186*
With 0.5 band width	8	0.2177	186*

Source: Computed based on Household Survey 2019.

Balancing test

The balancing test of covariates tests the significance of the mean difference between the matched and unmatched samples in terms of all the covariates used for the matching purpose. The unmatched samples of the beneficiary and non-beneficiary households were significantly different in terms of certain characteristics. However, one looks to see that any differences in the covariate means between the two groups in the matched sample have been eliminated, which would increase the likelihood of unbiased treatment effects.

The calculated test result measures the balancing of the distribution of p-value, for each variable used in the regression; it calculates the p-value for equality of means in participant and non-participant groups, both before and after matching. The p-value is based on a regression of the variable on the participant indicator. Before matching this is an un-weighted regression on the whole sample while after matching the regression is weighted using the matching weight and is based on the support sample. According to the p-value of individual tests, similarities in the mean values between treatment and control groups in this matching estimator, relatively all of the variables have lower p-value (insignificant). This shows kernel bandwidth matching is preferred as the best estimator of the average treatment effect. Consequently, only the outcome of this estimator is used to meet the study objectives of estimating the impacts of PSNP on the food security of households(Table 8).

Table 8

Testing of balance of propensity score and covariates.

Covariates	Samples	Mean		% bias	%reduction	t-test	P-value
		Treated	Control
Gender	Unmatched	.6383	.75532
	Matched	.6383	.58511	11.6	54.5	0.75	0.457
Marital status	Unmatched	2.1915	2.0745
	Matched	2.1915	2.1489	8.3	63.6	0.56	0.576
Age	Unmatched	45.106	40.989
	Matched	45.106	42.191	18.1	29.2	1.16	0.249
Education	Unmatched	1.3936	1.3936
	Matched	1.3936	1.4255	-6.5	0.0	-0.44	0.658
Family size	Unmatched	4.2021	4.1064
	Matched	4.2021	3.6383	30.0	-488.9	2.35	0.020
Labour	Unmatched	2.617	2.8723
	Matched	2.617	2.6702	-2.9	79.2	-0.34	0.736
Land size	Unmatched	.79787	1.1489
	Matched	.79787	1.0106	-25.7	39.4	-1.95	0.053
Oxen number	Unmatched	.59574	.89362
	Matched	.59574	.57447	2.3	92.9	0.19	0.848
TLU	Unmatched	1.6277	2.7234
	Matched	1.6277	3.4787	-69.4	-68.9	-4.58	0.000
Access to credit	Unmatched	.42553	.23404
	Matched	.42553	.41489	2.3	94.4	0.15	0.883
Access to-Exten.	Unmatched	.81915	.75532
	Matched	.81915	.58511	57.1	-266.7	3.61	0.000
Off-farm activity	Unmatched	.44681	.2234
	Matched	.44681	.29787	32.3	33.3	2.13	0.035
Food shortage-month	Unmatched	4.234	3.3511
	Matched	4.234	3.1064	83.1	-27.7	5.62	0.000

Source: Computed based on Household Survey 2019.

Table 9 indicates that the value of Pseudo− R2 was very low. This low Pseudo− R2 value and the insignificant likelihood ratio test indicate that the PSNP participant and nonparticipant household had the same distribution in the covariates after matching. These results indicate that the matching procedure can balance the characteristics in the treated and the matched comparison groups. Hence, these results can be used to evaluate the impact of PSNP participation among the group of households having similar observed characteristics. This enables to compare observed outcomes for PSNP participants with those of non-participant groups sharing common support.

Table 9

Chi-square test for the joint significance of variables.

Sample	PsR2	LR chi2	P>ch2
Unmatched	0.215	56.11	0.000
Matched	0.265	69.00	0.000

Source: Computed based on Household Survey 2019.

Average treatment effect estimation of the impact of PSNP on households’ food security

This section presents and discusses the estimation result of the impact of PSNP on households’ food security using a kernel matching algorithm. The researcher used ATT and t- value columns to evaluate the impact indicators. It was generally hypothesized that participating in PSNP increases household food security. Table 10 shows the ATT results for participation in productive safety net programs based on kernel matching methods. The results indicate that being a member of PSNP significantly increases household food security status. The estimated evidence showed that there is supportive evidence of a statistically significant effect on outcome variables. The result is interpreted as the impact of PSNP on household food security for PSNP program participants is 2519.29348kilocalories as compared to non-participants.

Table 10

Impact of PSNP participation on household consumption using ATT.

Outcome variable	Sample	Treated	Control	Difference	S.E	T-Stat
Caloric intake	ATT	2519.29348	2111.64439	407.649088	159.548886	2.56

Source: Computed based on Household Survey 2019.

This finding is consistent with what has been studied before [9, 28, 50, 51]. Besides, many of the beneficiaries, during the focus group discussion stated that selling of land and giving the land for share (sharecropping) has almost stopped after the coming of the PSNP.

Different recent studies [8, 15, 52–55] conducted in the rural communities of Ethiopia show the positive impact of PSNP. PSNP has a positive effect on children by providing short-term nutritional benefits [52]. Recent studies indicates that PSNP has a positive impact by preventing households from selling productive assets for their consumption [55]. Specifically, PSNP has a positive effect on consumption [15, 53]. However, some scholars [19, 25, 56–60] found out that PSNP has a negative impact on the rural communities. This implies that PSNP implementation was to be multi-dimensional, which varies from place to place. For example, some communities develop a sense of dependency syndrome [57], and as a result, sell their assets, rent their land to be part of the PSNP. Therefore, in good implementation, PSNP helps beneficiaries for consumption smoothing and asset accumulation. The PSNP has a significant impact on households in Sire District.

Checking robustness of average treatment effect on food security

The strength of the propensity score matching model for the average treatment effect on treated households was found to be good. Based on Rosenbaun, Nnmatch was used to check the robustness of the ATT for the outcome variables which is household food security [45]. As seen in Table 11, independent variables used to estimate the outcome variable food security are found to be, jointly, statistically significant with Z value 2.17 and P value less than one percent. The result aligns with the ATT result of food security we did.

Table 11

Average treatment effect for the treated-on food security.

Matching estimator: Average Treatment Effect for the Treated
Weighting matrix: inverse variance Number of obs = 188
Number of matches (m) = 1
Food security	Coef.	Std. Err.	Z	P>|z	[95% Conf. Interval]
SATT	497.117	229.333	2.17	0.030	47.6326 946.6014

Source: Computed based on Household Survey 2019.

Sensitivity analysis

The PSM approach cannot be fully controlled for unobservable bias. As is suggested by Rosenbaum and Rubin, Gebrehiwot and Van der, the presentation of matching estimates should go with Sensitivity analysis [45, 61]. Thus, the study verified the sensitivity of the estimated treatment effects on selection on the unobservable bias using the bounding approach designed by Rosenbaum and Rubin [45].

This procedure used the matching estimates to determine the confidence interval of the outcome variable for different values of μ(gamma). Gamma captures the level of association of unobserved characteristics with the treatment and outcome required for it(the unobserved characteristics) to explain the observed impacts. If the lowest μ, which encompasses 0, then one may state that the probability of such unobserved bias is relatively high and the estimated impact is therefore sensitive to the existence of unobservable [45]. Table 12 reports the upper and lower bounds results, showing that under the assumption of no hidden bias, when μ = 1, the +sig- test statistics indicates a highly significant treatment effect for PSNP intervention on household food calorie intake. The effect is significant under μ = 1 if we have underestimated the true treatment effect. The Sig+ revealed that the study is insensitive to hidden bias. The sensitivity analysis, therefore, indicates that the observed results on the impact of PSNP on households’ food calorie intakes were robust and the results were not sensitive to confounders(Table 12).

Table 12

Food security sensitivity analysis table.

Gama	Sig+	Sig-	t-hat+	t-hat-	CI+	CI-
1	.00209	.002409	408	408	116.5	700
1.05	.004469	.00001242	379.5	438.5	92.001	734.5
1.1	.007743	.0000633	350	461	66	763
1.15	.012642	.0000319	315.5	488.5	40	795.5
1.2	.019598	.000016	286.5	519.5	13.001	820
1.25	.029031	.000079	260.5	546.5	-12.5	850
1.3	.041314	.000039	238.5	563	-38.5001	869.5
1.35	.056745	.000019	213.5	595.25	-58.5	897

Source: Computed based on Household Survey 2019.

Conclusions and policy implications

The main idea of this study was to answer the question, “What could happen if the program was not in place “in Sire District. To answer this and come up with the final result, the Propensity score matching method was applied. The findings of this research based on the estimation result of the Average Treatment Effect on the Treated (ATT) indicates that implementation of PSNP had an impact on households food security status. The result of sensitivity analysis shows that estimated ATT for calorie intake (the outcome variable) is insensitive which indicates its robustness.

The beneficiaries’ households were more food secure than non-beneficiary households by 68% and54% respectively. The mean energy available for the beneficiary and non-beneficiary households is 2488.500 and 2153.394 kcal, respectively. Estimates of the average treatment effect of the treated indicated that the Productive Safety Net Program can impact households’ food security by 2519.2938 kilocalories higher in the kernel matching method. Based on study findings, future policy recommendations were developed: The study found that PSNP had significantly increased households calorie intake. This is an encouraging indicator for Programme implementers and funding agents.

Therefore, channeling further efforts on this indicator is important for a more pronounced impact of the Programme.

The government, non-governmental organizations and other concerned bodies should emphasize strengthening the program execution and insisting local governments involve vulnerable households like women in the PSNP to ensure their food security.

Projects aim at nutrition and consumption should be encouraged by the government in the rural communities including study areas.

In addition, the government and non-government organizations should strengthen agricultural education as a development intervention. This would help rural households to have better food consumption habits and make them in better food security status. Hence, there are variations of program impact studies in different countries, this study recommends further research with greater scope and at different locations on the impact of PSNP and other Food Security programs on household food security.

(ZIP)

Click here for additional data file.

22 Apr 2021

PONE-D-21-07822

Impact of productive safety net program on food security of beneficiary households in western Ethiopia: A matching estimator approach

PLOS ONE

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Reviewer #1: The topic of is interesting and relevant. The elaboration and the applied methodology is accurate, however a formal deficiency has to be highlighted: at the tables and figures there are no source indication which is a necessary requirement in case of scientific papers. It can be seen that most probably all (or the majority) of data derived from the primary research of the authors, but even if so, it has to be indicated accordingly.

The bibliographic review could be a bit broadened especially a part of the timely issues and challenges of food supply security in Ethiopia and possibly in some other sub-Saharan African countries to make the context more international. The international bibliography is rich in this respect (e.g. https://pubs.iied.org/sites/default/files/pdfs/migrate/14640IIED.pdf or https://re.volsu.ru/eng/contacts/8_Nad_i_dr.pmd.pdf .

The authors are also advised to specify and underline the applicability of their new results and findings possibly in a structured list of recommendations. After the suggested improvements were made, the paper can be recommended to be accepted and published.

Reviewer #2: The manuscript is technically sound, the data the authors have collected supports the study and the conclusions, thus the study presents the results of original research. What was especially welcomed is the critical approach towards similar program evaluations in Ethiopia and the fact that these previous studies did not include non-beneficiary households in their researches, thus relying on the beneficiary households to interpret their former situation, many times ending up with bias reporting, as the authors put it "respondents recall is often incorrect since it is hard to remember all past incidents correctly, resulting in over or under-reporting of past incidents". According to the submitted information, the authors have not published this study elsewhere. The structure of the paper is logical, starts with introducing the situation first and then presenting the methods and sources of data collection. In this case 188 households were included in the survey, cross-sectional survey data were gathered from these, further key informants interviews and focus group discussion was employed to triangulate results and a Chi-square test was employed to compare the households’ food security status. From the paper we can see that interviews and other analyses are performed to a high technical standard and are described in sufficient detail within the paper, the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously. The authors have made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available within tables, explaining those tables as well. Also the conclusion is presented in the required way and data supports the findings, the policy implications are logical and supported by findings. The research meets all applicable standards for the ethics of experimentation and research integrity and the paper adheres to appropriate reporting guidelines and community standards for data availability. The only issue with the recent form of the paper is that it is not presented in an intelligible fashion and a language check is required as well. There are many typos within the text, missing spaces and the incorrect use of quotation marks (not where they are used but are cases where not the quotation mark is used for a citation or the citation is not closed correctly) make it harder to enjoy the paper. My recommendation is to publish the paper after the minor revisions regarding the correction of the language and style mistakes.

Reviewer #3: The topic itself is really actual, even nowadays, despite the efforts of the country to deal with food secutity problems. The paper as a whole, the theme would be fine for publishing in PLOS ONE, however, in details, some modifications are needed.

- Introduction should be more focused and better structured (highlighting the research questions more clearly, context, objective)

- In fact, there is no literature review while it is a must. Authors should write a comprehensive, analytical and critical literature review chapter. In the paper the essential international literature dealing with this topic and/or focusing on Ethiopia should be reviewed. Other countres' cases could be interesting as well (e.g. https://doi.org/10.21163%2FGT_2020.152.16 or the issue of trust is described well https://doi.org/10.1080/08974438.2013.833567)

- Metodology chapter should be better focused and more clear, now it seems like unstructured.

- English proofreading is needed to provide the expected scientific and right English.

**********

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16 Jun 2021

Attached in a separate paper. You can also see here

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Response: The authors has been submitted to professional editors and got revised manuscript

. Address of the editor:

ABOLARIN Gbminiyi, Ph.D.

abolaring@babcock.edu.ng

Editor, College of Postgraduate Studies,

Babcock University, Ogun State, Nigeria

3. PLOS requires an ORCID iD for the corresponding author in Editorial Manager

Response:

ORCID-Aregash Getachew Hailu

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4822-0470

ORCID-Zerihun Yohannes Amare

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4503-6790

● The name of the colleague or the details of the professional service that edited your manuscript: see the full details of the professional editor

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Response: Corrected

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Response: Corrected

6. Please review your reference list to ensure that it is complete and correct. If you have cited papers that have been retracted, please include the rationale for doing so in the manuscript text, or remove these references and replace them with relevant current references. Any changes to the reference list should be mentioned in the rebuttal letter that accompanies your revised manuscript. If you need to cite a retracted article, indicate the article’s retracted status in the References list and also include a citation and full reference for the retraction notice.

Response: corrected

7. Thank you for submitting the above manuscript to PLOS ONE. During our internal evaluation of the manuscript, we found significant text overlap between your submission and the following previously published works:

We would like to make you aware that copying extracts from previous publications, especially outside the methods section, word-for-word is unacceptable. In addition, the reproduction of text from published reports has implications for the copyright that may apply to the publications.

Please revise the manuscript to rephrase the duplicated text, cite your sources, and provide details as to how the current manuscript advances on previous work. Please note that further consideration is dependent on the submission of a manuscript that addresses these concerns about the overlap in text with published work.

Response:

We will carefully review your manuscript upon resubmission, so please ensure that your revision is thorough.

Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: Yes

________________________________________

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Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: Yes

3. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

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Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: Yes

________________________________________

4. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

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________________________________________

Response: The language is edited as to the level of standard with accredited editor. The address is described at the beginning of this document.

5. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #1: The topic of is interesting and relevant. The elaboration and the applied methodology is accurate, however a formal deficiency has to be highlighted: at the tables and figures there are no source indication which is a necessary requirement in case of scientific papers. It can be seen that most probably all (or the majority) of data derived from the primary research of the authors, but even if so, it has to be indicated accordingly.

Response: proofread and Corrected:

The bibliographic review could be a bit broadened especially a part of the timely issues and challenges of food supply security in Ethiopia and possibly in some other sub-Saharan African countries to make the context more international. The international bibliography is rich in this respect (e.g. https://pubs.iied.org/sites/default/files/pdfs/migrate/14640IIED.pdf or https://re.volsu.ru/eng/contacts/8_Nad_i_dr.pmd.pdf .

The authors are also advised to specify and underline the applicability of their new results and findings possibly in a structured list of recommendations. After the suggested improvements were made, the paper can be recommended to be accepted and published.

Response: the suggested and other literatures are included

Reviewer #2: The manuscript is technically sound, the data the authors have collected supports the study and the conclusions, thus the study presents the results of original research. What was especially welcomed is the critical approach towards similar program evaluations in Ethiopia and the fact that these previous studies did not include non-beneficiary households in their researches, thus relying on the beneficiary households to interpret their former situation, many times ending up with bias reporting, as the authors put it "respondents recall is often incorrect since it is hard to remember all past incidents correctly, resulting in over or under-reporting of past incidents". According to the submitted information, the authors have not published this study elsewhere. The structure of the paper is logical, starts with introducing the situation first and then presenting the methods and sources of data collection. In this case 188 households were included in the survey, cross-sectional survey data were gathered from these, further key informants interviews and focus group discussion was employed to triangulate results and a Chi-square test was employed to compare the households’ food security status. From the paper we can see that interviews and other analyses are performed to a high technical standard and are described in sufficient detail within the paper, the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously. The authors have made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available within tables, explaining those tables as well. Also the conclusion is presented in the required way and data supports the findings, the policy implications are logical and supported by findings. The research meets all applicable standards for the ethics of experimentation and research integrity and the paper adheres to appropriate reporting guidelines and community standards for data availability. The only issue with the recent form of the paper is that it is not presented in an intelligible fashion and a language check is required as well. There are many typos within the text, missing spaces and the incorrect use of quotation marks (not where they are used but are cases where not the quotation mark is used for a citation or the citation is not closed correctly) make it harder to enjoy the paper. My recommendation is to publish the paper after the minor revisions regarding the correction of the language and style mistakes.

Response: The authors tried to improve the presentation styles and the language was also proofread by accredited editor.

Reviewer #3: The topic itself is really actual, even nowadays, despite the efforts of the country to deal with food secutity problems. The paper as a whole, the theme would be fine for publishing in PLOS ONE, however, in details, some modifications are needed.

- Introduction should be more focused and better structured (highlighting the research questions more clearly, context, objective)

- In fact, there is no literature review while it is a must. Authors should write a comprehensive, analytical and critical literature review chapter. In the paper the essential international literature dealing with this topic and/or focusing on Ethiopia should be reviewed. Other countres' cases could be interesting as well (e.g. https://doi.org/10.21163%2FGT_2020.152.16 or the issue of trust is described well https://doi.org/10.1080/08974438.2013.833567)

- Metodology chapter should be better focused and more clear, now it seems like unstructured.

- English proofreading is needed to provide the expected scientific and right English.

________________________________________

Response: The authors tried to maintain the journal formalities and include the literature as suggested.

Submitted filename: Response to reviewer.docx

Click here for additional data file.

11 Jul 2021

PONE-D-21-07822R1

Impact of productive safety net program on food security of beneficiary households in western Ethiopia: A matching estimator approach

PLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Aregash Getachew Hailu ,

Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS ONE’s publication criteria as it currently stands. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process.

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We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Kind regards,

László Vasa, PhD

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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Please review your reference list to ensure that it is complete and correct. If you have cited papers that have been retracted, please include the rationale for doing so in the manuscript text, or remove these references and replace them with relevant current references. Any changes to the reference list should be mentioned in the rebuttal letter that accompanies your revised manuscript. If you need to cite a retracted article, indicate the article’s retracted status in the References list and also include a citation and full reference for the retraction notice.

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Reviewer #1: (No Response)

Reviewer #3: (No Response)

**********

2. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #3: Partly

**********

3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #3: Yes

**********

4. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #3: Yes

**********

5. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #3: Yes

**********

6. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #1: The bibliographic extension was partially done, however it could be still further broadened, like https://re.volsu.ru/eng/contacts/8_Nad_i_dr.pmd.pdf , https://ojs.lib.unideb.hu/apstract/article/view/6217/5834 .

The authors were also advised to specify and underline the applicability of their new results and findings in a structured list of recommendations, but it is still missing from the revised version. In my opinion, these improvements may merely increase the value of the paper. After the suggested recommendations were implemented the paper can be published.

Reviewer #3: The authors did not made the reqommended improvements so I can't accept this paper for publication in its present form. I advise to check my comments and recommendations of the first review round again.

**********

7. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files.

If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public.

Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review? For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy.

Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #3: No

[NOTE: If reviewer comments were submitted as an attachment file, they will be attached to this email and accessible via the submission site. Please log into your account, locate the manuscript record, and check for the action link "View Attachments". If this link does not appear, there are no attachment files.]

While revising your submission, please upload your figure files to the Preflight Analysis and Conversion Engine (PACE) digital diagnostic tool, https://pacev2.apexcovantage.com/. PACE helps ensure that figures meet PLOS requirements. To use PACE, you must first register as a user. Registration is free. Then, login and navigate to the UPLOAD tab, where you will find detailed instructions on how to use the tool. If you encounter any issues or have any questions when using PACE, please email PLOS at figures@plos.org. Please note that Supporting Information files do not need this step.

10 Aug 2021

1. Please ensure that your manuscript meets PLOS ONE's style requirements, including those for file naming.

Response: The authors tried to meet the PLOS ONE’s style requirements.

2. We suggest you thoroughly copyedit your manuscript for language usage, spelling, and grammar. If you do not know anyone who can help you do this, you may wish to consider employing a professional scientific editing service.

Response: The authors has been submitted to professional editors and got revised manuscript

. Address of the editor:

ABOLARIN Gbminiyi, Ph.D.

abolaring@babcock.edu.ng

Editor, College of Postgraduate Studies,

Babcock University, Ogun State, Nigeria

3. PLOS requires an ORCID iD for the corresponding author in Editorial Manager

Response:

ORCID-Aregash Getachew Hailu

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4822-0470

ORCID-Zerihun Yohannes Amare

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4503-6790

● The name of the colleague or the details of the professional service that edited your manuscript: see the full details of the professional editor

● A copy of your manuscript showing your changes by either highlighting them or using track changes (uploaded as a *supporting information* file)---Attached

● A clean copy of the edited manuscript (uploaded as the new *manuscript* file)

Response: Attached

1. We note you have included a table to which you do not refer in the text of your manuscript. Please ensure that you refer to Table 3, 10, 12, in your text; if accepted, production will need this reference to link the reader to the Table.

Response: Corrected

2. Please ensure that you refer to Figure 1 in your text as, if accepted, production will need this reference to link the reader to the figure.

Response: Corrected

6. Please review your reference list to ensure that it is complete and correct. If you have cited papers that have been retracted, please include the rationale for doing so in the manuscript text, or remove these references and replace them with relevant current references. Any changes to the reference list should be mentioned in the rebuttal letter that accompanies your revised manuscript. If you need to cite a retracted article, indicate the article’s retracted status in the References list and also include a citation and full reference for the retraction notice.

Response: corrected

7. Thank you for submitting the above manuscript to PLOS ONE. During our internal evaluation of the manuscript, we found significant text overlap between your submission and the following previously published works:

We would like to make you aware that copying extracts from previous publications, especially outside the methods section, word-for-word is unacceptable. In addition, the reproduction of text from published reports has implications for the copyright that may apply to the publications.

Please revise the manuscript to rephrase the duplicated text, cite your sources, and provide details as to how the current manuscript advances on previous work. Please note that further consideration is dependent on the submission of a manuscript that addresses these concerns about the overlap in text with published work.

Response:

We will carefully review your manuscript upon resubmission, so please ensure that your revision is thorough.

Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: Yes

________________________________________

2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: Yes

3. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: Yes

________________________________________

4. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: No

Reviewer #3: No

________________________________________

Response: The language is edited as to the level of standard with accredited editor. The address is described at the beginning of this document.

5. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #1: The topic of is interesting and relevant. The elaboration and the applied methodology is accurate, however a formal deficiency has to be highlighted: at the tables and figures there are no source indication which is a necessary requirement in case of scientific papers. It can be seen that most probably all (or the majority) of data derived from the primary research of the authors, but even if so, it has to be indicated accordingly.

Response: proofread and Corrected:

The bibliographic review could be a bit broadened especially a part of the timely issues and challenges of food supply security in Ethiopia and possibly in some other sub-Saharan African countries to make the context more international. The international bibliography is rich in this respect (e.g. https://pubs.iied.org/sites/default/files/pdfs/migrate/14640IIED.pdf or https://re.volsu.ru/eng/contacts/8_Nad_i_dr.pmd.pdf .

The authors are also advised to specify and underline the applicability of their new results and findings possibly in a structured list of recommendations. After the suggested improvements were made, the paper can be recommended to be accepted and published.

Response: the suggested and other literatures are included

Reviewer #2: The manuscript is technically sound, the data the authors have collected supports the study and the conclusions, thus the study presents the results of original research. What was especially welcomed is the critical approach towards similar program evaluations in Ethiopia and the fact that these previous studies did not include non-beneficiary households in their researches, thus relying on the beneficiary households to interpret their former situation, many times ending up with bias reporting, as the authors put it "respondents recall is often incorrect since it is hard to remember all past incidents correctly, resulting in over or under-reporting of past incidents". According to the submitted information, the authors have not published this study elsewhere. The structure of the paper is logical, starts with introducing the situation first and then presenting the methods and sources of data collection. In this case 188 households were included in the survey, cross-sectional survey data were gathered from these, further key informants interviews and focus group discussion was employed to triangulate results and a Chi-square test was employed to compare the households’ food security status. From the paper we can see that interviews and other analyses are performed to a high technical standard and are described in sufficient detail within the paper, the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously. The authors have made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available within tables, explaining those tables as well. Also the conclusion is presented in the required way and data supports the findings, the policy implications are logical and supported by findings. The research meets all applicable standards for the ethics of experimentation and research integrity and the paper adheres to appropriate reporting guidelines and community standards for data availability. The only issue with the recent form of the paper is that it is not presented in an intelligible fashion and a language check is required as well. There are many typos within the text, missing spaces and the incorrect use of quotation marks (not where they are used but are cases where not the quotation mark is used for a citation or the citation is not closed correctly) make it harder to enjoy the paper. My recommendation is to publish the paper after the minor revisions regarding the correction of the language and style mistakes.

Response: The authors tried to improve the presentation styles and the language was also proofread by accredited editor.

Reviewer #3: The topic itself is really actual, even nowadays, despite the efforts of the country to deal with food secutity problems. The paper as a whole, the theme would be fine for publishing in PLOS ONE, however, in details, some modifications are needed.

- Introduction should be more focused and better structured (highlighting the research questions more clearly, context, objective)

- In fact, there is no literature review while it is a must. Authors should write a comprehensive, analytical and critical literature review chapter. In the paper the essential international literature dealing with this topic and/or focusing on Ethiopia should be reviewed. Other countres' cases could be interesting as well (e.g. https://doi.org/10.21163%2FGT_2020.152.16 or the issue of trust is described well https://doi.org/10.1080/08974438.2013.833567)

- Metodology chapter should be better focused and more clear, now it seems like unstructured.

- English proofreading is needed to provide the expected scientific and right English.

________________________________________

Response: The authors tried to maintain the journal formalities and include the literature as suggested. The research questions and objectives are listed in a structured way.

Second time reviewers’ comments

Reviewer #1: The bibliographic extension was partially done, however it could be still further broadened, like https://re.volsu.ru/eng/contacts/8_Nad_i_dr.pmd.pdf , https://ojs.lib.unideb.hu/apstract/article/view/6217/5834 .

The authors were also advised to specify and underline the applicability of their new results and findings in a structured list of recommendations, but it is still missing from the revised version. In my opinion, these improvements may merely increase the value of the paper. After the suggested recommendations were implemented the paper can be published.

Response: The authors appreciate the comments of the reviewer and tried to expand using recent published papers and reviewers suggested articles.

Reviewer #3: The authors did not made the recommended improvements so I can't accept this paper for publication in its present form. I advise to check my comments and recommendations of the first review round again.

Response: We revised based on the previous comments and suggestions. If we go beyond this, and add more literature, the page number will be increased and out of the PLOS ONE submission guideline.

Submitted filename: Response to reviewer.docx

Click here for additional data file.

31 Aug 2021

PONE-D-21-07822R2

Impact of productive safety net program on food security of beneficiary households in western Ethiopia: A matching estimator approach

PLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Hailu,

Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS ONE’s publication criteria as it currently stands. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process.

Please submit your revised manuscript by 15.09.2021. If you will need more time than this to complete your revisions, please reply to this message or contact the journal office at plosone@plos.org. When you're ready to submit your revision, log on to https://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/ and select the 'Submissions Needing Revision' folder to locate your manuscript file.

Please include the following items when submitting your revised manuscript:

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If you would like to make changes to your financial disclosure, please include your updated statement in your cover letter. Guidelines for resubmitting your figure files are available below the reviewer comments at the end of this letter.

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We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Kind regards,

László Vasa, PhD

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Journal Requirements:

Please review your reference list to ensure that it is complete and correct. If you have cited papers that have been retracted, please include the rationale for doing so in the manuscript text, or remove these references and replace them with relevant current references. Any changes to the reference list should be mentioned in the rebuttal letter that accompanies your revised manuscript. If you need to cite a retracted article, indicate the article’s retracted status in the References list and also include a citation and full reference for the retraction notice.

Additional Editor Comments (if provided):

[Note: HTML markup is below. Please do not edit.]

Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. If the authors have adequately addressed your comments raised in a previous round of review and you feel that this manuscript is now acceptable for publication, you may indicate that here to bypass the “Comments to the Author” section, enter your conflict of interest statement in the “Confidential to Editor” section, and submit your "Accept" recommendation.

Reviewer #1: All comments have been addressed

Reviewer #2: (No Response)

Reviewer #3: All comments have been addressed

**********

2. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: Yes

**********

3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: Yes

**********

4. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: Yes

**********

5. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here.

Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

Reviewer #3: Yes

**********

6. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #1: The Authors repeatedly disregarded the reviewer's advise. The smaller problem is that they did not incorporate the suggested sources into the bibliographic review, but the structured and possibly detailed chapter of conclusions and suggestions is still missing (even though the original chapter was slightly extended). This part could have highlighted also the new scientific findings of the paper. Another - formal - problem is that the authors did not indicate the sources of data in case of most Tables in the paper. It is very much necessary in case of scientific papers, even if the data were eventually collected by the authors' primary research.

Reviewer #2: After reading the new submission (corrected version) i still can see many of those mistakes which are not acceptable for an academic journal. There are still many typos within the text, the ones which have been highlighted already (missing spaces and the incorrect use of quotation marks). These has to be corrected before acceptance.

Reviewer #3: The authors accapted all of my recommendations for improving the paper and modified/upgraded it in the right way. The paper is more sound in its current form, so I recommend it for publications without changes.

**********

7. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files.

If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public.

Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review? For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy.

Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

Reviewer #3: No

[NOTE: If reviewer comments were submitted as an attachment file, they will be attached to this email and accessible via the submission site. Please log into your account, locate the manuscript record, and check for the action link "View Attachments". If this link does not appear, there are no attachment files.]

While revising your submission, please upload your figure files to the Preflight Analysis and Conversion Engine (PACE) digital diagnostic tool, https://pacev2.apexcovantage.com/. PACE helps ensure that figures meet PLOS requirements. To use PACE, you must first register as a user. Registration is free. Then, login and navigate to the UPLOAD tab, where you will find detailed instructions on how to use the tool. If you encounter any issues or have any questions when using PACE, please email PLOS at figures@plos.org. Please note that Supporting Information files do not need this step.

11 Oct 2021

Reviewer #1: The Authors repeatedly disregarded the reviewer's advise. The smaller problem is that they did not incorporate the suggested sources into the bibliographic review, but the structured and possibly detailed chapter of conclusions and suggestions is still missing (even though the original chapter was slightly extended). This part could have highlighted also the new scientific findings of the paper. Another - formal - problem is that the authors did not indicate the sources of data in case of most Tables in the paper. It is very much necessary in case of scientific papers, even if the data were eventually collected by the authors' primary research.

Authors’ response: 1.The “reviewer one” suggested to include these two unrelated papers:

1.1 https://re.volsu.ru/eng/contacts/8_Nad_i_dr.pmd.pdf

1.2. https://ojs.lib.unideb.hu/apstract/article/view/6217/5834

These suggested materials are not related to our article and we are unable to add.

2. Conclusion and recommendations are already corrected based on the first session reviewers comments and you can check the first submission of the manuscript with track change

3. The sources of the data are cited in all Tables and acknowledged.

Reviewer #2: After reading the new submission (corrected version) i still can see many of those mistakes which are not acceptable for an academic journal. There are still many typos within the text, the ones which have been highlighted already (missing spaces and the incorrect use of quotation marks). These has to be corrected before acceptance.

Response: all typos and inappropriate quotation marks are corrected

Reviewer #3: The authors accapted all of my recommendations for improving the paper and modified/upgraded it in the right way. The paper is more sound in its current form, so I recommend it for publications without changes.

Submitted filename: Response to reviewer.docx

Click here for additional data file.

3 Nov 2021

10 Nov 2021

Response to reviewer

Reviewer #2: After reading the submission (the newly submitted version), though the authors claimed they have corrected everything, i still can see many mistakes which are, in my understanding, not acceptable for an academic journal. There are still many typos within the text, the ones which have been highlighted already (missing spaces and the incorrect use of quotation marks). These has to be corrected before acceptance.

Response: We tried to read seriously and address all the comments. See the track change for evidence

Submitted filename: Response to reviewers November 2021.docx

Click here for additional data file.

18 Nov 2021

Impact of productive safety net program on food security of beneficiary households in western Ethiopia: A matching estimator approach

PONE-D-21-07822R4

Dear Dr. Hailu,

We’re pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been judged scientifically suitable for publication and will be formally accepted for publication once it meets all outstanding technical requirements.

Within one week, you’ll receive an e-mail detailing the required amendments. When these have been addressed, you’ll receive a formal acceptance letter and your manuscript will be scheduled for publication.

An invoice for payment will follow shortly after the formal acceptance. To ensure an efficient process, please log into Editorial Manager at http://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/, click the 'Update My Information' link at the top of the page, and double check that your user information is up-to-date. If you have any billing related questions, please contact our Author Billing department directly at authorbilling@plos.org.

If your institution or institutions have a press office, please notify them about your upcoming paper to help maximize its impact. If they’ll be preparing press materials, please inform our press team as soon as possible -- no later than 48 hours after receiving the formal acceptance. Your manuscript will remain under strict press embargo until 2 pm Eastern Time on the date of publication. For more information, please contact onepress@plos.org.

Kind regards,

László Vasa, PhD

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

Reviewers' comments:

14 Dec 2021

PONE-D-21-07822R4

Impact of productive safety net program on food security of beneficiary households in western Ethiopia: A matching estimator approach

Dear Dr. Hailu:

I'm pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been deemed suitable for publication in PLOS ONE. Congratulations! Your manuscript is now with our production department.

If your institution or institutions have a press office, please let them know about your upcoming paper now to help maximize its impact. If they'll be preparing press materials, please inform our press team within the next 48 hours. Your manuscript will remain under strict press embargo until 2 pm Eastern Time on the date of publication. For more information please contact onepress@plos.org.

If we can help with anything else, please email us at plosone@plos.org.

Thank you for submitting your work to PLOS ONE and supporting open access.

Kind regards,

PLOS ONE Editorial Office Staff

on behalf of

Prof. Dr. László Vasa

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE