Food Aid Impact on Poverty Reduction: Empirical Evidence from Rural Households in Ethiopia

Ethiopia is one of the highest food aid recipient countries in the Sub-Saharan Africa region. Despite the magnitude of the aid, its impact as development resource is inconclusive in both theoretical and empirical evidences. This paper evaluates the impact of food aid on poverty reduction making use of an Ethiopian rural longitudinal household survey data (ERHS) primarily collected in 1999 and 2004, with the purpose to add empirical evidences on the existing debate on food aid. Besides, it deals with the correlation of poverty assets which has fundamental importance for policy implication and the choice of appropriate development strategies. We used separate regressions on determinants of welfare growth for food-for-work (FFW) and free-food-distribution (FFD) programs. The results show that access to information, initial endowment, household characteristics, and shocks were the main determinants of escaping from poverty and food aid dependence. The results from the poverty profile, difference-indifferences matching and switching regression support the fact that participation in FFW or FFD programs reduces poverty. However, some indicators from the analysis showed that both FFW and FFD programs have targeting efficiency problems and differ across regions, which indicate that there is room for improvement in the distribution of food aid through targeting the poorest and geographically based intervention linked with productive investment.Ethiopia; food-for-work (FFW); free-food-distribution (FFD); welfare growth; difference-in-differences propensity score matching; endogenous switching regression

Finding Quality Employment through Rural Urban Migration: a case study from Thailand

This study investigates the effects of rural urban migration on economic development in Thailand. It draws upon a panel data base of some 2000 rural households collected from 2007 to 2010 in three provinces from Northeast Thailand and migrant survey of some 650 migrants in the Greater Bangkok area conducted in 2010. The study offers some new findings on migration in Thailand. First there is evidence that the widely praised social protection policies for the rural poor in Thailand may be less effective for urban migrants. Second, the study shows that migration has benefits for income growth of rural households but is less effective in reducing inequality and relative poverty in rural areas. Generally the less favored rural households tend to have migrants who are more educated albeit at an overall low education level of the rural population in Thailand. The overall message which emerges from this paper is that poor rural households tend to produce poor migrants which could be one of the reasons for the continuous existence of a wide rural urban divide in welfare. The crucial importance of education for migration success calls for more investment in secondary education in rural areas. --Rural Urban Migration,Thailand,Employment Quality

Shocks, migration and welfare dynamics in South-East Asia

[no abstract

Climate change, income sources, crop mix, and input use decisions: Evidence from Nigeria

This paper combines panel data from nationally representative household-level surveys in Nigeria with long-term satellite-based spatial data on temperature and precipitation using geo-referenced information related to households. It aims to quantify the impacts of climate change on agricultural productivity, income shares, crop mix, and input use decisions. We measure climate change in harmful degree days, growing degree days, and changes in precipitation using long-term (30 year) changes in temperature and precipitation anomalies during the crop calendars. We find that, controlling for other factors, a 15 percent (one standard deviation) increase in change in harmful degree days leads to a decrease in agricultural productivity of 5.22 percent on average. Similarly, precipitation change has resulted in a significant and negative impact on agricultural productivity. Our results further show that the change in harmful degree days decreases the income share from crops and nonfarm self-employment, while it increases the income share from livestock and wage employment. Examining possible transmission channels for this effect, we find that farmers change their crop mix and input use to respond to climate changes, for instance reducing fertilizer use and seed purchases as a response to increases in extreme heat. Based on our findings, we suggest policy interventions that incentivize adoption of climate-resilient agriculture, such as small-scale irrigation and livelihood diversification. We also propose targeted pro-poor interventions, such as low-cost financing options for improving smallholders’ access to climate-proof agricultural inputs and technologies, and policy measures to reduce the inequality of access to livelihood capital such as land and other productive assets

COVID-19-Induced Disruptions of School Feeding Services Exacerbate Food Insecurity in Nigeria

BACKGROUND: The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic and associated lockdown measures have disrupted educational and nutrition services globally. Understanding the overall and differential impacts of disruption of nutritional (school feeding) services is critical for designing effective post-COVID-19 recovery policies. OBJECTIVES: The aim of this study was to examine the impact of COVID-19-induced disruption of school feeding services on household food security in Nigeria. METHODS: We combined household-level, pre-COVID-19 in-person survey data with postpandemic phone survey data, along with local government area (LGA)–level information on access to school feeding services. We used a difference-in-difference approach and examined temporal trends in the food security of households with and without access to school feeding services. Of the sampled households, 83% live in LGAs with school feeding services. RESULTS: Households experienced an increase in food insecurity in the post-COVID-19 survey round. The share of households skipping a meal increased by 47 percentage points (95% CI: 44–50 percentage points). COVID-19-induced disruptions of school feeding services increased households' experiences of food insecurity, increasing the probability of skipping a meal by 9 percentage points (95% CI: 3–17 percentage points) and the likelihood of going without eating for a whole day by 3 percentage points (95% CI: 2–11 percentage points). Disruption of school feeding services is associated with a 0.2 SD (95% CI: 0.04–0.41 SD) increase in the food insecurity index. Households residing in states experiencing strict lockdown measures reported further deterioration in food insecurity. Single mothers and poorer households experienced relatively larger deteriorations in food security due to disruption of school feeding services. CONCLUSIONS: Our findings show that COVID-19-induced disruptions in educational and nutritional services have exacerbated households’ food insecurity in Nigeria. These findings can inform the designs of immediate and medium-term policy responses, including the designs of social protection policies and alternative programs to substitute nutritional services affected by the pandemic

The role of spatial inequalities on youth migration decisions: Empirical evidence from Nigeria

We combine nationally representative data from Nigeria with spatiotemporal data from remote sensing and other sources to study how young migrants respond to observable characteristics of potential destinations, both in absolute terms and relative to origin locations. Migrants prefer destinations with better welfare, land availability and intensity of economic activity. We also find that migrants prefer shorter distances and those destinations with better urban amenities and infrastructure. However, responses vary by type of migrant and migration. For example, rural-rural migrants are more responsive to land availability and agricultural potential, while rural-urban and urban-urban migrants are more responsive to welfare and economic vibrancy (measured by nightlight intensity) in destinations. Distance induces varying impact on migration choices of poor and non-poor migrants as well as across more educated and less educated migrants. Longer distances discourage migration for female migrants, poorer migrants and less educated migrant while the implication for the non-poor and more educated migrants appears to be negligible. This is intuitive because poorer and less educated migrants have liquidity constraints to finance high migration costs. Our results suggest potential scope for predicting how labor mobility responds to alternative regional development policies

Micro insights on the pathways to agricultural transformation: Comparative evidence from Southeast Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa

Most studies of agricultural transformation document the impact of agricultural income growth on macroeconomic indicators of development. Much less is known about the micro-scale changes within the farming sector that signal a transformation precipitated by agricultural income growth. This study provides a comparative analysis of the patterns of micro-level changes that occur among small-holder farmers in Uganda and Malawi in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), and Thailand and Vietnam in Southeast Asia (SEA). Our analysis provides several important insights on agricultural transformation in these two regions. First, agricultural income in all examined countries is vulnerable to changes in precipitation and temperature, an effect that is nonlinear and asymmetric. SSA countries are more vulnerable to these weather changes. Second, exogenous increases in agricultural income in previous years improve non-farm income and trigger a change in labor allocation within the rural sector in SEA. However, this is opposite in SSA where the increase in agricultural income reduces non-farm income, indicating a substitution effect between farm and non-farm sectors. These findings reveal clear agricultural transformation driven by agricultural income in SEA, but no similar evidence in SSA

Spatial market integration of food markets during a shock: Evidence from food markets in Nigeria

This paper uses comprehensive and long time series monthly food price data and a panel dyadic regression framework to evaluate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and associated policy responses on spatial market integration across a diverse set of food items in Nigeria. The empirical results reveal several important insights. First, we show that a significant slowdown in the speed of adjustment and price transmission occurred during the pandemic. For some food items, the speed of adjustment and, by implication, spatial market integration weakened by two- to-threefold after the pandemic outbreak. The effect was especially pronounced for perishable food items. Second, lockdown measures and the spread of the pandemic triggered additional dispersion in market prices across markets. For example, lockdown measures were associated with a 5–10 percent reduction in the speed of readjustment toward long-term equilibrium. Third, additional underlying attributes of markets, including lack of access to digital infrastructure and distance between markets, exacerbated impacts associated with the pandemic. For instance, access to Internet service reduced the slowdown in the speed of adjustment caused by the pandemic, but longer distances between market pairs induced greater slowdown in the speed of price transmission. Our findings offer important insights for revitalizing the efficiency of food markets affected by the pandemic. The heterogenous impacts of the pandemic across value chains and markets reinforce the need to properly target post-pandemic recovery interventions and investments. Finally, we offer some insights to reduce the vulnerability of food and market systems to disruptions in future pandemics or similar phenomena that inhibit food marketing and trade

Rainfall shocks and land cover change impact of farmers’ crop choice and crop diversification decision in Nigeria and Uganda

Paper removed, not presented. December 18, 2019

Polygynous family structure and child undernutrition in Africa: Empirical evidence from Nigeria

Presented by Mulubrhan Amare (IFPRI), as part of the Annual Gender Scientific Conference hosted by the CGIAR Collaborative Platform for Gender Research, Addis Ababa, 25-27 September 2018