Abstract
In 1984, a two-part study was initiated to evaluate the income and nutritional effects of shifting from maize to sugar cane production in south Nyanza, Kenya. During the first phase, baseline data was collected on the socioeconomic, food-consumption, and health and nutritional status of a cohort of households prior to their entry into the small-holder sugar cane out-growers scheme. The combination of the two studies provided one of the few opportunities to have baseline economic and health information on the households prior to their entry into cash cropping. In the first phase, the per capita income of the two groups was the same. In the follow-up of the cohort sample, the per capita income of the new entrant group was higher than that of the non-sugar group. This increase in income did not appear to influence pre-schoolers’ morbidity or growth. Data from both phases of the study indicate that the health and sanitation environment had the most impact on pre-schoolers’ growth, suggesting that growth will not be substantially improved in the short term by income alone.