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on Development |
| By: | Bhabesh Hazarika (Economist at National Institute of Public Finance and Policy, New Delhi.); N R Bhanumurthy (Director at Madras School of Economics, Chennai.) |
| Keywords: | Conditional Cash Transfers; Maternal and Child Health; Programme Pathways; Informal Sector; Propensity Score Matching; Classification-JEL: : I12; I18; J13; O15Abstract: Maternity benefit programmes increasingly combine healthcare conditionalities with income support, yet it remains unclear whether improvements in maternal and child wellbeing arise through increased healthcare utilisation, additional household resources, or both. This study evaluates the Mukhyamantri Shramik Seva Prasuti Sahayata Yojana (MMSSPSY), a maternity benefit programme for women in the informal sector in Madhya Pradesh, India. Using primary survey data from 1, 246 mothers and propensity score matching to compare beneficiaries with eligible non-beneficiaries, we estimate programme impacts across the maternal and child health continuum. The programme substantially increased antenatal care utilisation, institutional delivery, iron-folic acid supplementation, and child immunisation, while also reducing low birth weight and improving maternal body mass index. However, it had limited measurable effect on maternal anaemia or child undernutrition. Household expenditure patterns suggest that while the transfer improved engagement with healthcare services and supported some nutritional investment during pregnancy, it was insufficient to sustain the investments needed to improve longer-term child nutrition. The findings highlight the importance of integrating maternity cash transfers with sustained nutrition support and quality maternal healthcare. These findings also have implications for the growing use of unconditional cash transfers especially targeted towards women, which seek to strengthen household resource availability and could potentially improve broader nutritional outcomes among women and children. Length: 46 pages |
| Date: | 2026–08 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:mad:wpaper:2026-309 |
| By: | Schling, Maja; Salazar, Lina; Perez Massard, Renee Gabriela; Barbosa, Daniel; Chang Huaita, Rodrigo Ysaac; Lee, Dasun |
| Abstract: | This study reviews a decade of rigorously evaluated IDB-supported agricultural interventions in Latin America and the Caribbean. The evidence base encompasses five major intervention categories: input and technology transfers, rural infrastructure, land regularization and administration, extension services and capacity-building, and animal and plant health. Five key findings emerge. First, productivity impacts are inherently dynamic and often require medium- and long-term data to fully capture the transformation of productive systems. Second, agricultural programs can generate substantial welfare gains, including improvements in food security, resilience, and inclusion, even in the absence of immediate increases in productivity or income. Third, heterogeneous impacts across gender and other population groups are highly relevant but remain insufficiently explored. Fourth, the measurement of spillover effects provides valuable insights into the broader development effectiveness of agricultural interventions beyond direct beneficiaries. Finally, combining survey data with remote sensing offers a powerful complementary approach that expands the scope of impact measurement and helps overcome many of the limitations of traditional field-based data collection. The study concludes with practical recommendations to strengthen the design, implementation, and evaluation of future agricultural development programs. |
| Keywords: | Agricultural Policies;Impact Evaluation;Agricultural productivity;rural development;Latin America and the Caribbean |
| JEL: | O13 Q16 Q18 C93 O22 |
| Date: | 2026–07 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:idb:brikps:14670 |
| By: | Sambit Bhattacharyya; Chirantan Chatterjee; Stephen Lartey |
| Abstract: | How do global crises affect development aid effectiveness? We explore this question by analyzing the impact of 2008 global financial crisis on development aid effectiveness in Africa using a novel triple-difference design (aid by donor x governance quality x trade exposure) estimated pre and post 2008 with nightlights data across 41 African countries observed over the period 2000 to 2021. We find Chinese aid to be effective in well governed and trade exposed countries following the crisis whereas OECD aid lost its governance dependent advantage. Structural break test confirms 2008 as a turning point for Chinese aid effectiveness. Total aid concentration outperforms aid diversification by 79% relative to pre-crisis patterns in terms of effectiveness. US aid appears to be inequality reducing post 2008. Chinese aid seems effective post 2008 irrespective of its modalities 'ODA like' and 'other official flows' whereas US aid is effective only under the modality 'economic'. The results appear to be robust to GDP as an alternative outcome variable and placebo test. |
| Keywords: | foreign aid, economic development, Africa, China |
| JEL: | F35 O19 O47 O55 |
| Date: | 2026–07 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:een:camaaa:2026-59 |
| By: | Pablo Filippi; Ryan Kim; Ms. Nan Li; María Jesús Pérez; Younghun Shim |
| Abstract: | We study how commodity booms affect productivity using administrative microdata from Chile combining firm exports by product and destination, employer-employee records, and firm-to-firm production networks. Exploiting differential Chinese demand across Chilean commodity products, we measure firms’ exposure to the boom and trace its effects on productivity and resource allocation. We find three mechanisms. First, more exposed firms experience larger revenue increases but no differential productivity gains, channeling revenues into wages and materials. Second, among exposed firms, low-productivity firms expand employment while high-productivity firms do not, hiring workers from more productive employers. Third, domestic suppliers with greater indirect exposure show larger sales and productivity gains. We develop a model with heterogeneous export wedges and labor market frictions in which commodity booms can reduce sectoral productivity by exacerbating input misallocation, consistent with firm-level and aggregate evidence. Calibrated to Chile, this mechanism explains half of the mining TFP decline from 2005 to 2013. |
| Keywords: | Commodity booms; Misallocation; Productivity; Micro-level Data; Labor reallocation. |
| Date: | 2026–07–31 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:imf:imfwpa:2026/163 |
| By: | Ben Malinga John (Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany); Souza Emmanuel; Jiaxin Shi (Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany) |
| Abstract: | -Life expectancy has risen substantially across Sub-Saharan African (SSA), but national trajectories have diverged. Malawi represents a striking case of transformation, moving from one of the region’s lowest ranked countries in 1950 to among its leaders in 2023 despite persistent economic stagnation. We examine how age specific mortality changes contributed to Malawi’s exceptional gains in life expectancy and compares its mortality transition with those of other SSA countries. We use age and sex specific mortality data from the 2024 United Nations World Population Prospects for 15 SSA countries between 1950 and 2023. Countries were selected to represent the highest, average, and lowest performing groups in life expectancy at birth in 1950. We analyze trends, decompose changes using the Arriaga method, and estimate potential future gains from eliminating mortality at specific ages. Results show that Malawi recorded the largest increase in life expectancy, gaining 36.2 years for females and 33.2 years for males. Its mortality decline followed a broadly similar age pattern to the region but with exceptional intensity: between 1950 and 1980, two thirds of gains came from childhood mortality reductions, while after 2000, adult survival improvements contributed nearly half. Malawi’s resilience during the HIV/AIDS crisis and rapid post 2000 recovery highlight the combined influence of expanded female education, large scale donor investment, and community-based health programs. Our findings provide the first long term age specific decomposition of Malawi’s life expectancy transformation in comparative SSA context, highlighting the changing age structure of mortality reduction in the region. |
| Keywords: | Africa, differential mortality, life expectancy, mortality decline |
| JEL: | J1 Z0 |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:dem:wpaper:wp-2026-036 |
| By: | Peng, Cong; Zhang, Enqi |
| Abstract: | Many areas in sub-Saharan Africa remain poorly connected to reliable road networks, while domestic food distribution relies heavily on road transport. Meanwhile, because most countries import refined fuel, shocks in global oil markets may translate into higher inland transport frictions and food prices, especially in remote markets. We examine how road-network remoteness shapes the transmission of international oil prices into local maize prices across 19 countries in subSaharan Africa. The analysis uses monthly market-level data from January 2021 to December 2023, a period that includes the sharp increase in international oil prices following the 2022 RussiaUkraine war. We measure market-level remoteness exposure by interacting road-network distance to ports with international oil prices. To address endogeneity concerns, we use an IV strategy that instruments remoteness exposure with proximity to straight lines connecting major mines and ports active before 2000, interacted with oil supply news shocks. The IV estimates imply that when international oil prices increased from $74 to $123 per barrel (as it did between December 2021 and June 2022), local maize prices would be 30.343% higher in a market located 500 km farther from ports than in an otherwise comparable market closer to ports. The estimated effect is stronger in areas with poorer agricultural production conditions, where weaker local production buffers make maize prices more vulnerable to oil price shocks in remote markets. As an extension, contemporaneous remoteness exposure is associated with higher local conflict events and fatalities, while lagged exposure has no detectable effect. These results highlight the need to account for road-network remoteness and local production buffers when assessing how global energy shocks translate into local food price vulnerability |
| Keywords: | International Development |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:aaea26:404636 |
| By: | Bhattarai, Santosh; Schwab, Benjamin |
| Abstract: | As the elderly population in developing nations across South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa continues to grow, many countries have expanded or considered expanding non-contributory pension programs. Beyond their impact on direct beneficiaries, increased transfers to the elderly may also affect younger generations with direct ties to recipients. How might such transfers impact the nutritional outcomes of grandchildren living in the same household as recipients? We examine this question using Nepal’s old age allowance (OAA) program. Nepal’s 2008 OAA expansion lowered the eligibility threshold from age 75 to 70 for general population and to age 60 for Dalit households nationwide and five districts of Karnali province. We estimate the causal effect of pension expansion on child anthropometric outcomes using the Flexible DiD estimator across five rounds of Nepal Demographic and Health Survey (2001, 2006, 2011, 2016, 2022). We find no evidence that the pension expansion did improved child anthropometry. In contrast, estimated average treatment effects on the treated are consistently negative. Event-study estimates reveal an immediate negative, though imprecisely estimated, shift in child height and weight at the first post treatment survey round. The pension expansion causes a statistically significant increase in household size, which may have diluted per child resource availability. We find a significant reduction in the probability of child consuming fruits and vegetables in the treated households, while animal source nutrients intake show no significant response. Placebo tests using time invariant household assets indicates these results cannot be explained solely by differential sample selection. We also find no evidence that maternal health, fertility behavior, and female labor supply drive the child nutrition result. In contrast to previous studies, we find no support for the hypothesis that expanded elderly pensions benefit co-residing children. |
| Keywords: | International Development |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:aaea26:404657 |
| By: | Arouna, Aminou; Britwum, Kofi; Gbede, Remy T. |
| Abstract: | Micronutrient deficiencies remain a major public health challenge in Sub-Saharan Africa, particularly among rural populations whose diets depend heavily on staple crops. Biofortification has emerged as a promising nutrition-sensitive agricultural strategy for addressing hidden hunger through the development of micronutrient-dense staple food crops. However, the success of biofortified crops depends largely on farmers’ willingness to adopt them. This study examined smallholder farmers’ willingness to adopt (WTA) biofortified crops in West Africa using data collected from 2, 509 farming households across Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, and Nigeria. The study focused on four biofortified crops: zinc rice, vitamin A maize, vitamin A cassava, and vitamin A sweet potato. A contingent valuation approach with a double-bounded dichotomous choice design was employed within a randomized information-treatment framework. Farmers were randomly assigned to a control group or to one of two information treatments emphasizing household-level nutritional benefits or combined household and public nutritional benefits of biofortified crops. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, Kendall’s coefficient of concordance, and a bivariate probit model. The results indicate favorable perceptions toward biofortified crops, particularly regarding yield potential, marketability, resilience, and ease of commercialization. More than 98% of respondents expressed willingness to adopt biofortified crops. The estimated average WTA suggests that farmers are willing to allocate approximately 66% of their cultivated land to biofortified crop production. The findings further reveal that information treatments significantly influence adoption intentions. Farmers exposed to information emphasizing both household and broader public nutritional benefits were significantly more likely to adopt biofortified crops compared with those receiving only basic information. Agricultural training, awareness of biofortified crops, and participation in commercial seed systems also positively influenced willingness to adopt. In contrast, larger proposed land allocations reduced the probability of adoption, indicating that farmers may prefer gradual adoption strategies under conditions of uncertainty. The study concludes that biofortified crops have substantial potential for scaling among smallholder farming systems in West Africa. However, sustained adoption will require strengthened seed systems, nutrition-sensitive extension services, awareness campaigns, and improved market development. The findings provide important policy insights for governments, development organizations, and agricultural research institutions seeking to promote nutrition-sensitive agricultural innovations and combat hidden hunger in the region. |
| Keywords: | Research Methods/ Statistical Methods |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:aaea26:404518 |
| By: | Magezi, Eustadius; Nakano, Yuko; Tsujimoto, Yasuhiro |
| Abstract: | Balancing environmental sustainability and agricultural productivity is a major global challenge. In particular, increasing crop productivity while reducing fertilizer inputs is central to achieving sustainable intensification among smallholder farmers in Sub-Saharan Africa. This study evaluates the impact of P-dipping—an innovative technique for lowland rice production that enables farmers to achieve high yield with a small amount of fertilizer by placing a triple superphosphate (TSP) fertilizer near the root system at transplanting— on yield, income, and profit. Despite the technological advantages of P-dipping, its diffusion would require improvements in the fertilizer supply chain, as TSP fertilizer remains largely unavailable in rural markets. We conducted a randomized controlled trial (RCT) to answer two primary questions: the effectiveness of P-dipping training for farmers on productivity, and whether providing training to both farmers and local fertilizer retailers would enhance the development of the TSP market. We compared three groups: a control group without training, farmers trained only, and farmers trained together with fertilizer retailers. We find that the adoption of P-dipping increased fertilizer use efficiency by 10.6 to 14.0 kilograms of paddy per kilogram of fertilizer applied. Furthermore, the adoption increased rice yield by 6.9 to 14.1 kilograms per are compared to non-P-dipping plots, resulting in higher income and profit even under an international fertilizer price surge that occurred in 2022 during the experimental period from 2021 to 2024. Our intention-to-treatment effects show that providing P-dipping training to both farmers and fertilizer retailers results in more sustained adoption than training farmers only. Retailers, however, stopped stocking TSP when project logistical support ended, resulting in a decline in adoption rates. These findings suggest that while P-dipping can significantly improve fertilizer use efficiency and productivity, its long-term success depends on viable supply chains. |
| Keywords: | International Development |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:aaea26:404653 |
| By: | Niazi, Kamran; Poudel, Dixit; Burrone, Sara; Bologna, Giulio; Lombardi, Niccolo; Scognamillo, Antonio |
| Abstract: | Anticipatory cash transfers, i.e. disbursed before climate shocks materialise rather than after, are expanding rapidly across fragile settings, yet rigorous evidence on their effectiveness in slow-onset drought contexts remains scarce. This study provides one of the first quasi-experimental evaluations of Early Warning-based Anticipatory Cash Transfers (EWACT) targeting a slow-onset drought in a fragile, conflict-affected setting, using three rounds of panel data from 1, 635 households in Baidoa district, Somalia (2024–2025) and a difference-in-differences design with inverse probability weighting. Results show that treated households significantly increased savings and crop reserves and improved debt repayment capacity, the intermediary outcomes of the asset-protection, savings, and debt-management pathways, which translated into a 33 percentage-point improvement in food consumption scores and a 7 percentage-point reduction in crop losses at midline. No significant effects on livestock mortality were detected. Effects on mobility and displacement, reveal a reduction in both, with mobility effect that deepens from 5 to 12 percentage points between midline and endline, even as food security gains dissipate. An instrumental variable extension shows that food security benefits are front-loaded and fade with elapsed time since transfer, while financial stock outcomes persist across seasons. This temporal asymmetry, transient food security improvements alongside a strengthening and durable reduction in mobility, is the paper's central empirical contribution, with implications for the design, sequencing, and cost-effectiveness of anticipatory action in fragile, drought-prone contexts. |
| Keywords: | Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:aaea26:404575 |
| By: | Disslbacher, Franziska (Vienna University of Economics and Business); Morelli, Salvatore; , Matteo |
| Abstract: | Using the novel GC Wealth Project Data Warehouse, this paper shows that wealth inequality has increased since the early 2000s in roughly 60% of the countries in our sample, although trends are not uniform across countries. While the largest gains in wealth shares accrue to the top 10%, relative losses are borne by the bottom 50% and the middle 40% alike. We reveal substantial variation of estimates across data sources and units of analysis, which complicates international comparison of wealth inequality. Yet, core trends at the country level are generally robust. Individual-based series generally report higher inequality than household-based ones. Regional patterns reveal sharp increases in inequality in Latin America, North America, India, and China, while Europe and Asia-Pacific exhibit more stable trends. Incorporating Forbes billionaire data extends coverage to low-income countries and Africa—where, notably, billionaire wealth relative to GDP has remained stable, marking a distinct exception to global patterns. (Stone Center on Socio-Economic Inequality Working Paper) |
| Date: | 2026–07–01 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osf:socarx:xrnpj_v1 |