Internal migration and vulnerability to poverty in Tanzania

This paper investigates internal migration and vulnerability to poverty in Tanzania. It examines whether migration reduced household vulnerability to poverty for a panel of households from the Kagera region over the period 2004-2010. The dataset allows the analysis of two samples of households: those with the same head in the periods considered and an enlarged network of split-off households. The potential endogeneity of migration is controlled by both matching methods and an exogenous variation. A severe drought in 2008-09 affected the areas of the country with a bimodal rain season, but not those with a unimodal rain season. It is thus possible to study the heterogeneity of migrants with respect to an unanticipated shock in the region of destination. The evidence shows that migration reduced vulnerability to basic needs and to food consumption poverty for families which experienced migration to unimodal regions. The results are consistent with migration as a risk management strategy by households

Internal Migration Is an Effective Risk Management Strategy for Households in Rural Tanzania

Various explanations have been put forward to shed light on individual decisions to migrate and the effects of migration on the household of origin. Using panel data from migrants and original households living in Tanzania, Rebecca Pietrelli and Pasquale Scaramozzino test a new perspective: migration as an effective strategy adopted by original households for managing risk

Internal Migration and Vulnerability to Poverty in Tanzania

This paper investigates whether migration reduced household vulnerability to poverty for a panel of households from the Kagera region in Tanzania over the period 2004-2010. The potential endogeneity of migration is controlled by both matching methods and an exogenous variation: a severe drought in 2008-09 which affected the areas of the country with a bimodal rain season, but not those with a unimodal rain season. Migration reduced vulnerability to basic needs and to food consumption poverty only for families which experienced migration to unimodal regions. The evidence supports the view that migration served as an effective risk management strategy for households

The effects of violent conflict on household resilience and food security: Evidence from the 2014 Gaza conflict

This paper studies how conflict affects household resilience capacity and food security, drawing on panel data collected from households in Palestine before and after the 2014 Gaza conflict. During this escalation of violence, the majority of the damages in the Gaza Strip were concentrated close to the Israeli border. Using the distance to the Israeli border to identify the effect of the conflict at the household level through an instrumental variable approach, we find that the food security of households in the Gaza Strip was not directly affected by the conflict. However, household resilience capacity that is necessary to resist food insecurity declined among Gazan households as a result of the conflict. This was mainly due to a reduction of adaptive capacity, driven by the deterioration of income stability and income diversification. However, the conflict actually increased the use of social safety nets (expressed in the form of cash, in-kind or other transfers that were received by the households) and access to basic services (mainly access to sanitation) for the households exposed to the conflict. This finding may be related to the support provided to households in the Gaza Strip by national and international organizations after the end of the conflict. From a policy perspective, the case of the conflict in the Gaza Strip demonstrates that immediate and significant support to victims of conflict can indeed help restore resilience capacity

Food security and farmers' participation to value supply chain: the case of Ugandan maize

In many African countries, the crop commercialization is produced along a supply chain where farmers interact with intermediaries and traders. Using detailed panel data from Uganda 2009-12 (LSMS-ISA), this article examines whether farmer’s participation (inside or outside) and position (downstream and upstream) to maize value supply chain (VC) affect their food security. The paper finds some evidence that farmers’ food consumption, both in terms of level and variability, is affected by selling maize inside the VC. The results are suggestive that the gain from participation is driven by selling maize upstream in the VC

Market chain participation and food security: the case of the Ugandan maize farmers

An assessment of the links between market chain participation and food security is hampered by a scant empirical literature, mostly based on case studies. Our goal is to deal with this issue by providing a sound identification strategy using the WB LSMS-ISA panel data 2009-12 for Uganda and controlling for self-selection. We show that both the level and the variability of Ugandan maize farming households' food consumption is affected by market choice. However, contrary to common wisdom, intermediaries do not play a major role in farmers' welfare. This empirical evidence is consistent with the theoretical prediction that also in Sub-Saharan Africa modern food chains tend to reinforce vertical coordination across actors and the enforcement of contracts, thus reducing the market power of intermediaries

Household resilience to food insecurity: evidence from Tanzania and Uganda

Resilience has become one of the keywords in the recent scholarly and policy debates on food security. However, household resilience to food insecurity is unobservable ex ante. Therefore, the two key issues in empirical research and program implementation are how to estimate a proxy index of household resilience on the basis of observable variables and assess whether this index is a good indicator of the construct it intends to measure, i.e. household resilience. This paper contributes to this literature providing evidence based on two case studies: Tanzania and Uganda. Specifically, the paper: (i) proposes a method to estimate a resilience index and analyses what are the most important components of household resilience, (ii) tests whether the household resilience index is a good predictor of future food security status and food security recovery capacity after a shock, and (iii) explores how idiosyncratic and covariate shocks affects resilience and household food security. The analysis shows that: (i) in both countries adaptive capacity is the most important dimension contributing to household resilience, (ii) the resilience index positively influences future household food security status, decreases the probability of suffering a food security loss should a shock occur and speeds up the recovery after the loss occurrence, and (iii) shocks have a negative effect on food security and resilience contributes to reduce the negative impacts of these shocks, though this is not proven for self-reported and idiosyncratic shocks

Assistance in chronic conflict areas: evidence from South Sudan

People living in context prone to or affected by conflict suffer from many forms of deprivation. The international community plays a crucial role in strengthening the wellbeing of affected populations, including their food security. Unfortunately, quite often people exposed to conflict are not reached by national or international assistance because of targeting, accessibility, and marginalization. This can ultimately translate into a further deterioration of their food security status. This paper combines a geo-referenced household dataset collected in South Sudan in 2017 with the Armed Conflict Location and Events Data (ACLED), including information on conflict events. The collection of a very detailed household questionnaire in areas extensively affected by violence allows the analysis in a country generally unexplored by the empirical literature. We analyze the variation in conflict exposure across different households that live in the same district and we test the link between conflict exposure and humanitarian assistance. We find that those who live in the higher-intensity conflict areas, received less assistance than those less exposed to the conflict. The association is stronger with in kind provision of inputs for agriculture and livestock rather than for direct food assistance. We suggest the presence of social elites and marginalization as a possible explanation. We discuss the advantages of using cash transfers through mobile phones to normatively decided beneficiaries; evidence also supports interventions combining input distribution and markets’ rehabilitation. More evidence is needed on the modalities of delivery of humanitarian assistance in different food crises contexts. Cite this content as: d’Errico, M., Ngesa, O. & Pietrelli, R. 2020. Assistance in chronic conflict areas: evidence from South Sudan. FAO Agricultural Development Economics Working Paper 20-01. Rome, FAO

Resilience thresholds to temperature anomalies: a long-run test for rural Tanzania

The existence of thresholds constitutes an important frontier topic for resilience analysis and measurement. This paper contributes to the literature by identifying critical resilience thresholds below which rural Tanzanian households are unable to absorb the negative effects of temperature anomalies on long-run growth. To make up for the lack of long micro panels, we generate a synthetic panel covering the time span 2000–2013. We show that 25%–47% of households in our sample lie below the estimated thresholds. The evidence of resilience-driven regime shifts and non-linear dynamics has important implications for adaptation to climate change in developing countries and is of significant interest for policy interventions

Interpretability of composite indicators based on principal components

Principal component approaches are often used in the construction of composite indicators to summarize the information of input variables. The gain of dimension reduction comes at the cost of difficulties in interpretation, inaccurate targeting, and possible conflicts with the theoretical framework when the signs in the loading are not aligned with the expected direction of impact. In this study, we propose an adjustment in the construction of principal component approaches to avoid these problems. The effectiveness of the proposed approach is illustrated in defining the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations’ Resilience Capacity Index, which is used to measure household-level resilience to food insecurity. We conclude that the robustness gain of using the new method improves the reliability of the composite indicator