|
on Development |
| By: | Singh, Tushar; Kishore, Avinash; Alvi, Muzna |
| Abstract: | This paper explores the relationship between agriculture, dietary diversity, and market access in Nepal, testing the complex causal chains involved, and the nuanced connections between production diversity and dietary diversity among smallholder farmers. While diversifying farm production could enhance dietary diversity, the case of Nepal indicates a varied and context specific relationship. Market access emerges as a crucial factor, often exerting a more significant impact on smallholder farm households than production diversity. Access to markets not only influences economic viability but also contributes directly to food and nutrition security, offering a practical solution to address dietary needs. Focusing on Nepal's diverse terrain, the study analyzes the interplay of remoteness, market access, irrigation availability, and complementary inputs in shaping farmers' decisions, providing valuable insights into sustainable agricultural strategies for improved dietary outcomes in low- and middle-income countries. |
| Keywords: | Consumer/Household Economics, Farm Management |
| Date: | 2024–08–07 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:iaae24:344288 |
| By: | Hossain, Marup; Mendiratta, Vibhuti; Savastano, Sara |
| Abstract: | Agricultural and rural development interventions significantly reduce global poverty by providing growth-oriented tools, including but not limited to access to finance, training, and markets. While such interventions effectively reduce monetary poverty (e.g., $1 a day poverty line), there is increasing interest in incorporating non-monetary poverty indicators, such as education, health, and living standards, to capture inherent multidimensionality in poverty. This study analyzes data from 16 impact evaluation studies conducted between 2019 and 2023 to examine whether and to what extent agricultural and rural development interventions affect the multidimensional poverty of small-scale producers. Our analysis reveals a 4 percent reduction in multidimensional poverty for treatment households compared to comparison households. Our findings suggest that agricultural and rural development interventions play a positive role in reducing poverty and have the potential to improve the long-term well-being of poor households. |
| Keywords: | Agricultural and Food Policy |
| Date: | 2024–08–07 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:iaae24:344302 |
| By: | Padigapati, Venkata Naga Sindhuja; Singh, Alka; K V, Praveen |
| Abstract: | The feeding practices of infants and young children in the first two years of their lives are essential for their nutritional status. The lack of dietary variety poses a significant threat to children’s growth and development. Therefore, it is vital to study the dietary diversity among infants and young children in India to identify nutritional gaps, health risks, and factors that influence their diets. We analyzed data collected from 64, 084 children in India through the National Family Health Survey5, based on a 24-hour recall. This study focused on the consumption patterns of food groups and their critical factors among infants and young children in India. We found that only 22.46 percent of children met the minimum dietary diversity requirement. From logistic regression analysis, we identified that age, gender, birth order, religion, nutrition access, and health conditions significantly affect children’s food intake. This study highlighted the significance of maternal education and female leadership in improving health and nutrition outcomes for children. Moreover, the study identified that the socio-economic, cultural, and regional determinants influencing dietary diversity enable the development of tailored strategies. These strategies can ensure equitable access to diverse and nutritious foods, irrespective of socioeconomic background or geographic location in India. |
| Keywords: | Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety |
| Date: | 2024–08–07 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:iaae24:344350 |
| By: | Akalu, Lingerh Sewnet; Wang, Huashu; Walelign, Solomon Zena; Kassie, Workineh Asmare |
| Abstract: | Large-scale land investments are often pursued as pro-poor investments by governments in developing countries. However, research on their actual impact on local communities offers a mixed picture. This meta-analysis, drawing on estimates of 37 primary studies, sheds light to understand the overall impact of these investments on local communities. Our analysis finds a modest positive average impact (standardized mean effect size of 0.043) of large-scale agricultural investments on local communities' welfare and livelihoods. This suggests that, on average, large- scale agricultural investments can contribute to positive outcomes. Some potential pathways for this benefit include asset building, increasing income and enhancing food security. However, the sub-group analysis show that the average impact is heterogenous across host countries of these investments. For most of the countries the positive significant impact is robust. We discussed the source of these heterogeneity, the impact pathways and publication bias in the primary studies. The overall positive impact, albeit modest, suggests potential for large-scale agricultural investments to contribute to development outcomes. However, the smaller mean effect size and the observed heterogeneity highlight the need for further research to fully understand the nuances of large-scale agricultural investments. |
| Keywords: | Agribusiness |
| Date: | 2024–08–07 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:iaae24:344402 |
| By: | Takeshima, Hiroyuki; Kishore, Avinash; Kumar, Anjani |
| Abstract: | The fertilizer response of yield has been one of the major indicators of agricultural productivity in both developed and developing countries. Filling the evidence gap remains vital regarding fertilizer response in Asia, particularly in South Asia, given the evolution and emergence of new challenges, including intensifying climate shocks. We aim to partly fill this knowledge gap by investigating the associations between climate shocks and fertilizer response in Bangladeshi rice production. Using three rounds of nationally representative farm household panel data with plot- level information, we assess fertilizer response functions regarding rice yield and how the shapes of these response functions are heterogeneous in relation to anomalies in temperatures, droughts, and rainfall. We find robust evidence that climate anomalies have adverse effects on fertilizer responses, including higher temperatures for the Boro and the Aman irrigated systems and higher temperatures and droughts for the Aman rainfed systems. These findings hold robustly under various fertilizer response function forms, i.e., polynomial function and stochastic Linear Response Plateau. Furthermore, results for stochastic Linear Response Plateau are also consistent for both switching regression type models and Bayesian regression models. |
| Keywords: | Crop Production/Industries, Farm Management, Production Economics |
| Date: | 2024–08–07 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:iaae24:344280 |
| By: | Kafle, Kashi; Wang, Yuanhang; Kiiza, Barnabas |
| Abstract: | In the absence of reliable and timely weather information, unprecedented weather shocks can influence farmers’ decision-making. We take the case of Uganda to investigate the relationship between weather shocks and temporary migration among smallholders. Using longitudinal data from a nationally representative survey – Living Standard Measurement Study-Integrated Survey in Agriculture (LSMS-ISA) –, we examine if household-level weather shocks affect temporary migration. Using panel data estimators, we show that weather shocks reduce temporary migration among poor households, and the relationship is more pronounced for smallholders. We also find that the relationship differs by the type of migration. Weather shocks reduce temporary labor migration and migration for educational purposes, but migration for other reasons is not affected. These results are confirmed by focused group interviews with 24 rural farmers from all four regions of Uganda. We identify reduced agricultural productivity and low farm revenue as potential channels for the negative relationship between weather shocks and migration. |
| Keywords: | International Development |
| Date: | 2024–08–07 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:iaae24:344270 |
| By: | Ferreira, Francisco H. G. (London School of Economics); Brunori, Paolo (University of Florence); Neidhofer, Guido (ZEW Mannheim); Salas-Rojo, Pedro (London School of Economics); Sirugue, Louis (London School of Economics) |
| Abstract: | This paper argues that relative measures of intergenerational mobility and inequality of opportunity are closely related ways of quantifying the inheritability of inequality. We review both literatures for Latin America, looking both at income and educational persistence. We document very high levels of intergenerational persistence and inequality of opportunity for education, with inherited characteristics predicting 29% to 52% of the current-generation variance in years of schooling. Inherited circumstances are somewhat less predictive of educational achievement, measured through standardized test scores, accounting for 20% to 30% of their variance. Our estimates of inequality of opportunity for income acquisition suggest that between 46% to 66% of contemporary income Gini coefficients can be predicted by a relatively narrow set of inherited circumstances, making Latin America a region of high inequality inheritability by international standards. Our review also finds a very wide range of intergenerational income elasticity estimates, with substantial uncertainty driven by data challenges and methodological differences. |
| Keywords: | inequality of opportunity, intergenerational mobility, inherited inequality, Latin America |
| JEL: | D31 I39 J62 O15 |
| Date: | 2025–11 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp18254 |
| By: | Kiratu, Nixon Murathi; Aarnoudse, Eefje; Petrick, Martin |
| Abstract: | Though the suggested pathways of achieving nutrition through irrigation are production, income, water sanitation and hygiene and women’s empowerment, the linkages to nutritional outcomes are not understood well and often, nutritional measurement approaches neglect the households’ most vulnerable members; women and children. This study took the standpoint that irrigation is diverse and different irrigation arrangements (i.e. socio-technical set-ups in which irrigation takes place) affect household nutritional outcomes through different pathways. Using a simultaneous equation model and data from Kenya, the results showed that the different irrigation arrangements have different nutrition-outcome pathways. The results revealed that overall irrigation affects production diversity, farm income and women empowerment and nutrition-outcomes were improved through production diversity and income pathways. The farm households in the public irrigation scheme arrangements attained better nutritional outcomes only through the women empowerment pathway while it affected production diversity pathway negatively. The farmer-led irrigation arrangement was found to positively affect farm income and women empowerment and these two pathways were found to lead to improved household nutritional outcomes. Consequently, there is need for specific policy interventions based on irrigation arrangements as opposed to a unilateral policy encompassing irrigation. |
| Keywords: | Consumer/Household Economics, Environmental Economics and Policy, Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety |
| Date: | 2024–08–07 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:iaae24:344347 |
| By: | Jillie Chang (Inter-American Development Bank); David K. Evans (Center for Global Development); Carolina Rivas Herrera (New York University) |
| Abstract: | Approximately one in three people in Latin America and the Caribbean live in poverty and one in seven in extreme poverty. This paper provides an overview of who the poor are and how they live, using 18 recent household surveys from the region. It examines (1) how many people are poor, (2) how the poor are distributed geographically, (3) how poverty affects specific groups, (4) how much of the poverty in the region is chronic versus transitory, and (5) how poverty numbers have changed over time. Second, it identifies how the poor live. Specifically, it discusses (6) the living arrangements of the poor, (7) their assets, (8) how they earn their incomes, (9) how they access human capital services, and (10) their access to social safety nets. This descriptive analysis may be useful for targeting efforts and for generating hypotheses for poverty reduction that can be tested causally. |
| Keywords: | poverty, development, Latin America and the Caribbean |
| JEL: | I25 J20 O10 O12 O15 O18 |
| Date: | 2025–10–28 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cgd:wpaper:734 |
| By: | Bello, Lateef Olalekan; Awotide, Bola Amoke; Danso-Abbeam, Gideon; Sakurai, Takeshi |
| Abstract: | Climate change remains a major impediment to food security in majority of developing countries, such as the West Africa Sahel (WASR), due to the rudimentary and rain-fed production system practiced by most farmers. The adoption of climate-smart agricultural technologies (CSAT), which aim to increase resilience and adaptation to changing climatic conditions, is crucial for boosting crop productivity and increasing food sufficiency. This study examined the food security impact of smallholder farmers adopting CSAT in WASR (Mali and Niger). We control for potential endogeneity bias that could occur in this study by employing the extended ordered probit and multinomial endogenous treatment effect model to analyze food security impact using the two most common approaches, which are the Household Food Insecurity Access Scale (HFIAS) and Food Consumption Scores (FCS). The impact results from the HFIAS estimation indicate that CSAT adopters are more food insecure than non-adopters in WASR. Subsequently, the FCS estimation results show that smallholder farmers adopting CSAT are less food secure than non- adopters. Further analysis of mechanisms and pathways to food security revealed that CSAT 2 Copyright 2024 by Lateef Olalekan Bello, Bola Amoke Awotide, Gideon-Danso-Abbeam, and Takeshi Sakurai. All rights reserved. Readers may make verbatim copies of this document for non-commercial purposes by any means, provided that this copyright notice appears on all such copies. adopters significantly reduced the share of crop production they retained for household consumption compared to non-adopters. Subsequent findings revealed that adopters of CSAT generate significantly higher crop revenues than non-adopters. This implies that CSAT adopters sell the majority of their marketable surplus and retain a minor share for household consumption. These findings suggest that farm-level sensitization programs could emphasize the need for farmers to strike a balance between agricultural investment and food security. |
| Keywords: | Environmental Economics and Policy, Food Security and Poverty, Research and Development/Tech Change/Emerging Technologies |
| Date: | 2024–08–07 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:iaae24:344323 |
| By: | Araujo, Daniel; Laudares, Humberto; Murillo, Dafne; Paredes, Hector; Valencia Caicedo, Felipe |
| Abstract: | Can a brief period of economic prosperity leave a legacy of long-term adversity for local populations? This study investigates the enduring impact of the Amazon rubber boom around 1900 on contemporary income, inequality, Indigenous groups presence, and forest conservation. Identification exploits variation in historical rubber suitability across municipalities and discontinuities around rubber concession boundaries. Municipalities with larger shares of rubber-suitable land experienced an initial economic surge, as evidenced by higher per capita GDP in the 1920 Census, but this prosperity was not sustained by 2010. Increased ethnic mixing, already visible in the 1872 Census, indicates that earlier economic expansion intensified contact with Indigenous groups. In the long run, rubber-suitable areas show lower population density, higher extinction of Indigenous groups, and greater income inequality. Consistent with the disproportionate violence and labor coercion inflicted on Indigenous groups, our Regression Discontinuity analysis further documents long-lasting environmental effects, with higher rates of deforestation, coca cultivation, and cattle raising in former rubber concession areas. Together, the results suggest that while the rubber boom generated short-term wealth, it left a legacy of persistent underdevelopment, social transformation, and environmental degradation. |
| Keywords: | Commodity Exploitation;Rubber;Amazon;indigenous peoples;Forced Labor;Persistence;Private Concessions;Economic history |
| JEL: | N36 O15 J15 O13 N56 Q33 D31 |
| Date: | 2025–11 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:idb:brikps:14374 |
| By: | Amondo, Emily Injete; Kornher, Lukas; von Braun, Joachim |
| Abstract: | We conduct high-frequency panel surveys to investigate poverty dynamics, encompassing monetary and non-monetary dimensions, using various consumption and nutritional indicators. These surveys are carried out on random samples of rural households in Uganda, Ethiopia, and Bangladesh. Our findings reveal that a significant proportion of households in the lowest quartile in all three countries remain there after 2-3 months and even one year later. Our analysis using multinomial models suggests that natural shocks increase the likelihood of experiencing poverty in Ethiopia and facing food poverty in Uganda. Additionally, conflict- related shocks are strong predictors of chronic and transient monetary poverty in Uganda and escalate the probability of falling into food poverty in Ethiopia. We also observe substantial adverse effects of economic shocks on food poverty in both Uganda and Ethiopia. Furthermore, our results indicate that having a female head of household reduces the likelihood of escaping poverty by up to 14% in Ethiopia and Bangladesh while decreasing the probability of remaining non-poor by 21% and increasing the likelihood of being poor by 12% in Uganda. We recommend targeted interventions, such as investments in human capital, including education, safety nets, and financial policies that empower households to build their asset base, for instance, by acquiring livestock and promoting women empowerment. Such measures are crucial for reducing poverty and enhancing resilience in these communities. |
| Keywords: | Food Security and Poverty |
| Date: | 2024–08–07 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:iaae24:344300 |
| By: | Sakketa, Tekalign Gutu; Nkonde, Chewe; Nkonde, Mwelwa; Herrmann, Raoul |
| Abstract: | Nucleus-outgrower schemes (NOSs) are supposed to be a particularly effective private-sector mechanism to support smallholder farmers and contribute towards mitigating the problematic aspects of pure large- scale agricultural investments. Using two rounds of panel household surveys in Zambia, this study examines the impacts of the NOS of one of the largest foreign land-based investments in agriculture, Amatheon Agri Zambia (AAZ) Limited, on smallholder agricultural technologies adoption, sustainable land management (SLM) and productivity. The findings indicate that participation in the NOS increased the adoption of full- suite conservation agriculture (CA) practices. However, the impact on the adoption of other technologies, specifically the use of improved seed varieties, is less obvious and depends on the type of support provided and scheme design details such as crops promoted. The results also indicate that even if the impact on overall productivity is modest, the programme improves maize productivity during its initial phase compared to the later phase when the programme shifted its focus towards oilseed crops. In sum, the study suggests that NOSs, despite associated risks, have the potential to make substantial contribution to sustainable agricultural practices and to some extent improve productivity of smallholder farmers. |
| Keywords: | Agribusiness, Agricultural and Food Policy |
| Date: | 2024–08–07 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:iaae24:344286 |
| By: | Regassa, Mekdim D.; Esenaliev, Damir; Tzvetkova, Milena; Baliki, Ghassan; Schreiner, Monika; Stojetz, Wolfgang; Brück, Tilman |
| Abstract: | We study the impact of exposure to COVID-19 on food security and diet diversity in four African countries (Uganda, Tanzania, Sierra Leone and Mozambique), using phone-based survey data collected throughout 2021. We find that in 2021, one in two households faced moderate-to-severe food insecurity and one in three households had borderline to poor diet diversity score. Food insecurity and poor diet diversity are particularly pronounced among certain groups of households, who characterize with large family sizes, low access to public services, own fewer assets, and mostly have a female, younger, and less educated person as household head. Both food insecurity and poor diet diversity are positively associated with exposure to COVID-19 – either through individual experience of having a virus or having people in their surroundings who had the virus. We show that tighter movement restrictions and a more drastic decline in household income in COVID-19-exposed areas were the main reasons for worsened food insecurity and poorer diet diversity. Vulnerable households rarely received financial support from governments, forcing many of them to use harmful food- related coping strategies and to borrow from other households. |
| Keywords: | Food Security and Poverty, Health Economics and Policy, Labor and Human Capital |
| Date: | 2024–08–07 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:iaae24:344321 |