de Brauw, Alan

Nguyen, Trang

van den Berg, Marrit

Phuong Ha, Do Thi

Schools are an attractive entry point to improve children’s diets, as their eating habits can be shaped during childhood and the information disseminated from school can reach adults through children. We implemented a cluster-randomized trial in 12 schools in peri-urban Viet Nam to assess if two school-based interventions increased knowledge of healthy diets among children and their parents, as well as children’s consumption of healthy foods. First, children were given lessons about food before school lunch and encouraged to share the lessons with their parents. Second, children were provided with healthy snacks for five weeks to reinforce messages about healthy eating. We found that in the short term, the nutrition lessons raised the knowledge index score of the children by 0.35 standard deviation. After six months, this intervention retained its effectiveness only for the children who also received free access to fruit, emphasizing the linkage between knowledge and practice. By itself, free access to fruit at school increased the children’s daily fruit consumption by half a portion, but not at the expense of home fruit consumption. Access to healthy foods at school can therefore be an effective measure to raise children’s healthy consumption. Child-parent communication was not a reliable channel for knowledge dissemination in our setting.

Testing methods to increase consumption of healthy foods: Evidence from a school-based field experiment in Viet Nam

Hirvonen, Kalle

Abate, Gashaw T.

In early July 2020, we called by telephone a representative sample of nearly 600 households in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia to assess income changes and household food and nutrition security status during the COVID-19 pandemic (recall period covering June). This was the third administration of a COVID-19 related survey to these households, following surveys in early May 2020 and early June. About 64 percent of the households indicated in the third survey that their incomes were lower than expected (down from 67 percent reporting lower incomes than expected in previous month) and 42 percent reported that they are extremely stressed about the situation (down from 45 percent in previous month). Using a pre-pandemic wealth index, we find that less-wealthy households were considerably more likely to report income losses and high stress levels than were wealthier households. Compared to the period just before the pandemic (January and February 2020), indicators measuring food security have significantly worsened but during the pandemic they have remained relatively stable. Households now are less frequently consuming relatively more expensive but nutritionally richer foods, such as fruit and dairy products. However, overall food security status in Addis Ababa is not yet alarming and we see small signs of improvements in this July phone survey relative to previous months. However, many households have drawn down their savings over past months to buffer their food consumption. As the daily COVID-19 infection rates are still rising in Ethiopia, the food security situation in Addis Ababa may deteriorate over coming months, especially as the savings levels among the poorest households are now low. This calls for a further scale-up and strengthening of existing support programs.

Food and nutrition security in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia during COVID-19 pandemic: July 2020 report Food and nutrition security in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia during COVID-19 pandemic: July 2020 report

Ambler, Kate

Cash transfers are a key component of social protection policy in many developing countries. Yet many policymakers are concerned that continued receipt of such transfers may have unintended consequences, such as a reduction in labor supply when household income rises. We study this question by evaluating the impact of Pakistan’s Benazir Income Support Program(BISP), a cash transfer program targeted to poor, married women,on male and female labor supply. The BISP was implemented via a mechanism that reliedon a poverty score cutoff to determine eligibility, allowing for the identification of causal impacts using regression discontinuity. We find no impacts on household labor supply in the aggregate. When we break up estimates by gender, we find littleevidence of a changein female labor supply, strongevidence of increased male labor supply, and no evidence of changes to child labor. Hence, policy makers should not be concerned that BISP transfers negatively affect labor supply among recipients.

Household labor supply and social protection: Evidence from Pakistan’s BISP cash transfer program

Kramer, Berber

Murphy, Mike

Agricultural technology adoption is an important driver of rural poverty reduction. We study take-up of a specific technology: BARI-Mung 6 (BM6), an improved mung bean seed variety, among smallholder farmers in the southern region of Bangladesh. In contrast to agronomic studies on BM6 performance under highly controlled conditions, we focus on performance of this variety for farmers who are growing outside of the context of an agronomic field trial. We find no evidence of higher performance in this uncontrolled environment: we do not observe statistically significant differences in output or yields between farmers planting BM6 and those planting local varieties. We do, however, observe a significant positive association between BM6 use and yields among farmers who report applying seeds within recommended guidelines. Using a simple model, we illustrate that modest uncertainty around the required quantity of seed per unit area of land can substantively impact the profitability of BM6 seeds for smallholders in our study context. Our findings highlight the importance of providing adequate extension information along with improved technologies to encourage adoption and ultimately improve farmer welfare.

Yielding profits? Low adoption of an improved mung bean seed variety in Southern Bangladesh

Herskowitz, Sylvan

Sayaka, Bambang

Pasaribu, Sahat M.

Dabukke, Frans B. M.

Suhartini, Sri Hastuti

Suryani, Erma

Suwarno, Agus

Moyes, Tom

Smallholder farmers in developing countries face substantial constraints that limit their ability to reach their production potential. Two constraints—risk exposure and limited access to liquidity—pose particular challenges. Smallholders face a wide variety of risks that constrain both the choices they can make and their willingness to make investments. Limited availability of affordable credit, borrowing and saving products poorly aligned with the needs of the agriculture sector, and prohibitive borrowing eligibility requirements all impede farmers’ access to the liquidity necessary for investing in new, more profitable crops and technologies (International Finance Corporation, 2014). Observers have noted that a large share of long-term credit needs is not being met in Southeast Asia, despite its location near some of the world’s largest consumer markets (Shakhovskoy & Wendle, 2013). While existing financial services may be suitable for some farmers, access to finance is particularly inadequate among women, low-income groups, and ethnic minorities, and risk excluding the most vulnerable groups from these emerging economic opportunities.

Agricultural value chain finance in Indonesia

This paper studies womens empowerment in northern Mozambique as it relates to agriculture, considering in particular the factors that lead to womens managing the plots that they nominally control. Women control about 30 percent of the plots in the data but manage only about 70 percent of those plots. Using a unique panel dataset, the study finds that women are more likely to manage plots when households have historically had access to off-farm labor, typically completed by men.

de Brauw, Alan

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