Economic importance of breastfeeding

Abstract

While an increasing body of research has documented the importance of breastfeeding for infant health, very little research has been done on its economic implications. From an economic perspective, breast milk can in many respects be regarded like any other food commodity. For example, it could be stored in milk banks, and redistributed from areas of surplus to areas of scarcity. But breast milk is inique in that many of its benefits are associated more with its method of delivery than with its physical or nutritional properties per se. In this study based on field work in West Africa, the authors evaluate the economics of breast-feeding versus artificial feeding, but point out that the major impact of breastfeeding at national level is associated with its health-promoting and birth-spacing effects, neither of which are quantifiable at present.

PIP: Breast milk is a complete food for the first 4-6 months of life. It helps prevent diarrhea and obesity, and discourages the development of allergies. It is extremely difficult to put in economic terms the value of breastfeeding. Some of its benefits can be quantified in nonmonetary terms, such as morbidity, mortality, and population growth, while psychological benefits cannot be quantified. The authors of this article, however, attempt to estimate the economic value of breastfeeding in Ghana, and in the Ivory Coast. Calculated on a basis of a 2 year period, the cost of artificial feeding amounted to 310 U.S. dollars, to which another 210 should be added for the cost of the time spent in breastfeeding. This sum would be almost 3 times higher than that for breastfeeding in the same countries. Other economic implications must include the health-producing effects of breastfeeding, and the fact that lactation amenorrhea plays a crucial role in birth spacing, especially in developing countries.