Food crisis, household welfare and HIV/AIDS treatment : evidence from Mozambique

Using panel data from Mozambique collected in 2007 and 2008, the authors explore the impact of the food crisis on the welfare of households living with HIV/AIDS. The analysis finds that there has been a real deterioration of welfare in terms of income, food consumption, and nutritional status in Mozambique between 2007 and 2008, among both HIV and comparison households. However, HIV households have not suffered more from the crisis than others. Results on the evolution of labor force participation suggest that initiation of treatment and better services in health facilities have counter-balanced the effect of the crisis by improving the health of patients and their labor force participation. In addition, the authors look at the effect of the change in welfare on the frequency of visits to a health facility of patients and on their treatment outcomes. Both variables can proxy for adherence to treatment. This is a particularly crucial issue as it affects both the health of the patient and public health, because sub-optimal adherence leads to the development of resistant forms of the virus. The paper finds no effect of the change in welfare on the frequency of visits, but does find that people who experienced a negative income shock also experienced a reduction or a slower progression in treatment outcomes.Health Monitoring&Evaluation,Disease Control&Prevention,Food&Beverage Industry,Gender and Health,Food Security

Engaging men to transform inequitable gender attitudes and prevent intimate partner violence: a cluster randomised controlled trial in North and South Kivu, Democratic Republic of Congo

IntroductionThe study objective was to understand the effectiveness of Engaging Men through Accountable Practice (EMAP), a group-based discussion series which sought to transform gender relations in communities, on intimate partner violence (IPV), gender inequitable attitudes and related outcomes.MethodsA two-armed, matched-pair, cluster randomised controlled trial was conducted between 2016 and 2018 in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. Adult men (n=1387) and their female partners (n=1220) participated in the study. The primary outcomes of the study were female report of past year physical and/or sexual IPV and men’s intention to commit violence. Secondary outcomes included men’s gender attitudes, women’s economic and emotional IPV, women’s perception of negative male behaviours and perceived quality of the relationship.ResultsMen in EMAP reported significant reductions in intention to commit violence (β=−0.76; SE=0.23; p&lt;0.01), decreased agreement with any reason that justifies wife beating (OR=0.59; SE=0.08; p&lt;0.01) and increased agreement with the ability of a woman to refuse sex for all reasons (OR=1.47; SE=0.24; p&lt;0.05), compared with men in the control group. We found no statistically significant differences in women’s experiences of IPV between treatment and control group at follow-up (physical or sexual IPV: adjusted OR=0.95; SE=0.14; p=0.71). However, female partners of men in EMAP reported significant improvements to the quality of relationship (β=0.28; p&lt;0.05) and significant reductions in negative male behaviour (β=−0.32; p&lt;0.01).ConclusionInterventions engaging men have the potential to change gender attitudes and behaviours in conflict-affected areas. However, while EMAP led to changes in gender attitudes and behaviours related to perpetration of IPV, the study showed no overall reduction of women’s experience of IPV. Further research is needed to understand how working with men may lead to long-term and meaningful changes in IPV and related gender equitable attitudes and behaviours in conflict areas.Trial registration numberNCT02765139.</jats:sec

Large expert-curated database for benchmarking document similarity detection in biomedical literature search

Document recommendation systems for locating relevant literature have mostly relied on methods developed a decade ago. This is largely due to the lack of a large offline gold-standard benchmark of relevant documents that cover a variety of research fields such that newly developed literature search techniques can be compared, improved and translated into practice. To overcome this bottleneck, we have established the RElevant LIterature SearcH consortium consisting of more than 1500 scientists from 84 countries, who have collectively annotated the relevance of over 180 000 PubMed-listed articles with regard to their respective seed (input) article/s. The majority of annotations were contributed by highly experienced, original authors of the seed articles. The collected data cover 76% of all unique PubMed Medical Subject Headings descriptors. No systematic biases were observed across different experience levels, research fields or time spent on annotations. More importantly, annotations of the same document pairs contributed by different scientists were highly concordant. We further show that the three representative baseline methods used to generate recommended articles for evaluation (Okapi Best Matching 25, Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency and PubMed Related Articles) had similar overall performances. Additionally, we found that these methods each tend to produce distinct collections of recommended articles, suggesting that a hybrid method may be required to completely capture all relevant articles. The established database server located at https://relishdb.ict.griffith.edu.au is freely available for the downloading of annotation data and the blind testing of new methods. We expect that this benchmark will be useful for stimulating the development of new powerful techniques for title and title/abstract-based search engines for relevant articles in biomedical research.Peer reviewe

Attrition and follow-up rules in panel surveys : insights from a tracking experience in Madagascar

Most longitudinal surveys recontact households only if they are still living in the same dwelling, producing very high attrition rates, especially in developing countries where rural-urban migration is prevalent. In this paper, we discuss the implications of the various follow-up rules used in longitudinal surveys in the light of an original tracking survey from Madagascar

Des dynamiques imbriquées en période de croissance fragile : individus, familles et entreprises familiales à Madagascar, 1995-2005

Dans les pays en développement, l'imbrication des activités économiques au sein du ménage rend la mesure de la dynamique des revenus complexe, en particulier lorsque les périodes étudiées sont longues. Le contexte choisi est celui de la décennie 1995-2005 à Madagascar, une période particulièrement intéressante puisqu'il s'agit du premier épisode de croissance soutenue et quasi-ininterrompue depuis l'indépendance du pays en 1960. En utilisant des données collectées auprès de ménages ruraux et urbains et d'entreprises du secteur informel, en coupe et en panel, les trois chapitres étudient chacun un aspect particulier du problème de mesure la dynamique de la pauvreté sur longue période dans un contexte d'imbrication forte des unités productives et des ménages. Le premier chapitre examine la dynamique du secteur informel à Antananarivo en tenant compte de sa nature très hétérogène. Le deuxième mesure l'écart de performance entre les unités de production dirigées par des femmes et celles dirigées par des hommes. Il teste l’existence d’effets différenciés selon le genre des normes de partage et d’allocation des tâches au sein du ménage sur l’efficience technique des entreprises. Le troisième chapitre discute l’opportunité de suivre des migrants dans les enquêtes longitudinales. L’étude des micro-entreprises doit tenir compte de leur environnement familial et social, pour prendre la pleine mesure des contraintes qui pèsent sur elles. Des recherches sur le comportement et la rationalité économique des ménages urbains apparaissent nécessaire. En l'absence de données longitudinales, la principale limite du travail réside dans l'impossibilité de décrire la démographie des entreprises informelles dans le temps. Il semble indispensable d’imaginer des dispositifs de collectes de données innovants permettant de suivre ces unités de production dans le tempsIn developing countries, the complex interdependence of households, individuals and businesses makes the measurement of welfare dynamics challenging, especially over a long period, because economic activities are predominantly embedded in households. The context we have chosen, Madagascar between 1995 and 2005, is particularly interesting because it corresponds to an unprecedented period of growth interrupted only by a recession in 2002 due to a political crisis. Using urban, rural, cross-sectional and panel data, the three essays presented attempt to shed light on various aspects of welfare dynamics over a long period in Madagascar, with a special focus on the imbrication of productive activities, households and individuals. The first essay studies informal sector dynamics in Antananarivo with a special attention on its heterogeneous nature. The second measures the extent of the gender performance gap among informal entrepreneurs and explores the existence of gender-differentiated effects of sharing norms and the allocation of tasks within the household on the technical efficiency of enterprises. Finally, the third essay is a methodological contribution on the relevance of tracking movers in panel data collection in rural areas. Studying microenterprises within their family and social environment is necessary to fully grasp the constraints on productive activities. More research is necessary on the behavior and economic rationality of urban households. The lack of panel data on informal businesses limits what can be said on their demography, especially over a long period. There is a pressing need for innovative data collection devices which follow these production units over tim

The methodological challenge of monitoring living conditions. Insights from a tracking experience in Madagascar.

(english) Most longitudinal surveys recontact households only if they are still living in the same dwelling, producing very high attrition rates, especially in developing countries where rural-urban migration is prevalent. In this paper, we discuss the implications of the various follow-up rules used in longitudinal surveys in the light of an original tracking survey from Madagascar. This survey attempted in 2005 to search and interview all individuals who were living in the village of Bepako in 1995, the baseline year of a yearly survey, the Rural Observatories. The tracking survey yielded an individual recontact rate of 78.8%, more than halving attrition compared to a standard dwelling-based follow-up rule. The tracking reveals a very high rate of out-migration (38.8%) and household break-ups, as three quarters of recontacted households had divided between 1995 and 2005. The average income growth of the sample over the period increases by 28 percentage points when follow-up is extended to those who moved out of their household or village, suggesting that dwelling-based panels give a partial view of the welfare dynamics of the baseline sample. A higher baseline income per capita is associated with a higher probability of staying in Bepako and of being found in the tracking if one moved out. The hardest people to find are the poorest and most isolated. Special attention should be paid to collecting data that enable the identification and follow-up of individuals without which attrition is likely to remain a source of bias even after a tracking procedure is carried out. _________________________________ (français) La plupart des enquêtes en panel ne recontactent les ménages enquêtés que s'ils vivent toujours dans le même logement, ce qui créé des taux d'attrition très élevés, en particulier dans les pays en développement où la migration vers les villes est importante. Dans cet article, nous discutons les implications des différentes règles de suivi utilisées dans les enquêtes longitudinales à la lumière d'une enquête tracking originale réalisées à Madagascar. Cet enquête a tenté, en 2005, de chercher et enquêter tous les individus originaires de Bepako, où une enquête annuelle est réalisée depuis 1995 (Observatoires Ruraux). Ce dispositif a permis de recontacter 78.8% des individus, réduisant ainsi de plus de moitié l'attrition par rapport à un suivi des individus basé sur le logement. Le tracking révèle un taux de migration très élevé (38.8%) et d'importantes recompositions et divisions de ménages, puisque les trois quarts des ménages recontactés s'étaient divisés entre 1995 et 2005. La croissance du revenu moyenne dans l'échantillon sur la période augmente de 28 points de pourcentage lorsque le suivi est étendu à ceux ayant changé de ménage ou de lieu de résidence, suggérant que les panels basés sur le lieu de résidence génèrent une vue partielle de la dynamique des revenus de l'échantillon initial. Un revenu par tête initial plus élevé est associé à une probabilité plus forte de rester à Bepako ou d'être retrouvé lors du tracking. Les personnes les plus difficiles à retrouver sont les plus pauvres et isolées. Une attention particulière doit être portée à la collecte d'information permettant d'identifier et de réenquêter les individus, sans laquelle il est probable que l'attrition restera une source de biais, même après avoir réalisé une enquête tracking.Panel data, tracking surveys, attrition, mobility.

Inputs, Gender Roles or Sharing Norms? Assessing the Gender Performance Gap Among Informal Entrepreneurs in Madagascar

We use a representative sample of informal entrepreneurs in Madagascar to add new evidence on themagnitude of the gender performance gap. After controlling for business and entrepreneur characteristics, female-owned businesses exhibit a value added 28 percent lower than their male counterparts. Correcting for endogenous selection into informal self-employment raises the gap by 5 percentage points. We then investigate the role of sharing norms and gender-differentiated allocationof time within the household in the gender performance gap, by estimating their effect on the technicalinefficiency of female and male entrepreneurs. Only male entrepreneurs seem subject to pressure to redistribute from the distant network. Our findings are consistent with situations where women working at home would essentially feel negatively the burden of their own community due to intensesocial norms and obligations in their workplace but also of domestic chores and responsibilities. Wefind evidence of females self-selecting themselves into industries in which they can combine marketorientedand domestic activities.Nous utilisons un échantillon représentatif d’entrepreneurs informels à Antananarivo, Madagascar, pour mesurer et expliquer l'existence d'un écart de performance entre les unités de production informelles dirigées par des hommes et celles dirigées par des femmes. Une fois pris en compte les niveaux des facteurs de production, de capital humain, le secteur d'activité, l'année et la sélection endogène dans l'entreprenariat, l'écart de valeur ajoutée entre les entreprises féminines et masculines est d’environ 33%, au détriment des femmes. Nous étudions ensuite l’impact différencié des normesde partages au sein de la communauté et de la répartition des tâches au sein du ménage sur la capacitédes hommes et des femmes entrepreneurs à atteindre leur frontière de production. Notre analyse suggère que seuls les entrepreneurs masculins sont sujets à la pression à la redistribution de la part duréseau distant. Pour les femmes, opérer une activité à domicile n’est pas un handicap en soi, mais celaagit plutôt comme un vecteur de transmission des effets négatifs des normes sociales et de répartition des tâches sur la gestion de l’entreprise. Nos résultats sont compatibles avec des situations dans lesquelles les femmes entrepreneures opérant une activité à domicile ressentiraient davantage le poids de leur propre communauté, sans doute à cause de normes de solidarité contraignantes, mais aussi à cause de leurs responsabilités domestiques