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The Impact of Oportunidades on Human Capital and Income Distribution
  • Language: en
  • Pages: 44

The Impact of Oportunidades on Human Capital and Income Distribution

In an effort to inform social policy in Mexico, this paper analyzes the effects of a major social program on school attendance and household income distribution, accounting for its partial and general equilibrium effects. Linking a microeconometric simulation model and a general equilibrium model in a bidirectional way, the paper explicitly takes spillover effects of the Oportunidades conditional cash transfer program into account. Our results suggest that partial equilibrium analysis alone may underestimate the distributional effects of the program. Extending the coverage of the program leads to a significant increase in school attendance, which reduces labor supply and increases the equilibrium wages of the children who remain at work. This general equilibrium effect indirectly reduces income inequality and poverty at the national level.

Agriculture for development in Iraq? Estimating the impacts of achieving the agricultural targets of the national development plan 2013–2017 on economic growth, incomes, and gender equality
  • Language: en
  • Pages: 28

Agriculture for development in Iraq? Estimating the impacts of achieving the agricultural targets of the national development plan 2013–2017 on economic growth, incomes, and gender equality

This paper estimates the potential effects of achieving the agricultural goals set out in Iraq’s National Development Plan (NDP) 2013–2017 using a dynamic computable general equilibrium model. The findings suggest that raising agricultural productivity in accordance with the NDP may more than double average agricultural growth rates and add an average of 0.7 percent each year to economywide gross domestic product during the duration of the plan. As a consequence, the economy not only diversifies into agriculture, but agricultural growth also lifts growth in the food processing and service sectors. Achieving the yield targets for cereals (especially wheat) and for fruits and vegetables will...

Implications of productivity growth in Pakistan – an economy wide analysis
  • Language: en
  • Pages: 4

Implications of productivity growth in Pakistan – an economy wide analysis

This policy note describes the economy wide implications of public investments and policies developed under Pakistan’s new Framework for Economic Growth. Policies based on this Framework are expected to lead to substantial gains in productivity in the industrial and service sectors of Pakistan’s economy. We use Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) analysis to compare the implications on welfare and growth under different distributions of productivity growth across sectors.

The Indus Basin of Pakistan
  • Language: en
  • Pages: 187

The Indus Basin of Pakistan

This study assesses the impacts of climate risks and development alternatives on water and agriculture in the Indus basin of Pakistan. It analyzes inter-relationships among the climate, water, and agriculture sectors and provides a systems modeling framework for these purposes.

Measuring Food Policy Research Capacity
  • Language: en
  • Pages: 52

Measuring Food Policy Research Capacity

Addressing emerging global poverty, hunger, and malnutrition challenges requires prudent evidence-based policymaking at the country level. Capacity for generating evidence remains a major constraint in the policy process in developing countries. We surveyed 30 countries to measure the capacity of their individuals, organizations, and policy process system to undertake food and agricultural policy research. Our Food Policy Research Capacity Index, constructed using measures of human capacity (PhD full-time equivalent researchers per million rural residents), human capacity productivity (publications per PhD full-time equivalent researcher), and strength of institutions (the government effecti...

Data Needs for Gender Analysis in Agriculture
  • Language: en
  • Pages: 22

Data Needs for Gender Analysis in Agriculture

To support gender analysis in agriculture, household surveys should be better designed to capture gender-specific control and ownership of agricultural resources such as male-owned, female-owned, and jointly owned assets. This paper offers guidelines on how to improve data collection efforts to ensure that women farmers are interviewed and that their voices are heard. Researchers need to clarify who should be interviewed, how to structure the interview, and how to identify which people are involved in various activities, as owners, managers, workers, and decisionmakers. It is important not simply to assume that one particular person does these activities based on social norms, but instead to...

Comprehensive Food Security and Vulnerability Analysis
  • Language: en
  • Pages: 44

Comprehensive Food Security and Vulnerability Analysis

The Nigerian Comprehensive Food Security and Vulnerability Analysis (CFSVA) provides an in-depth assessment of the food security situation within Nigeria. This is very important as it equips policymakers with timely and relevant information that will aid the targeting of interventions. Some of the most pertinent findings of the study are listed below: • Food insecurity and poverty are intricately linked. Some 29 percent of households in the poorest wealth quintiles have unacceptable diets (9 percent poor and 20 percent borderline) compared with 15 percent in the wealthiest (2 percent poor and 13 percent borderline). • The poorest livelihoods are found in agriculture. Seventy-seven percent ...

Dynamics of Transformation
  • Language: en
  • Pages: 36

Dynamics of Transformation

Agriculture in African South of the Sahara (SSA) can be transformed if the right public support is provided at the initial stage, and it can sustain itself once the enabling environment is put in place. Successes are also specific to the location of projects. In Ghana, interesting insights are obtained from the successful Kpong Irrigation Project (KIP), contrasted with other major irrigation projects in the country. Through an exploratory review, we describe how a productive system evolved in KIP and how public support for critical aspects (accumulation of crop husbandry knowledge, selection and supply of profitable varieties, and mechanization of land preparation) might have created a productive environment that the private sector could enter and fill in the market for credit, processing, mechanization of harvesting, and other institutional voids that typically have constrained agricultural transformation in the rest of SSA. Slower progress in other projects also raises a number of questions. We conclude by summarizing those questions and some testable hypotheses for future research.

Examining the sense and science behind Ghana’s current blanket fertilizer recommendation
  • Language: en
  • Pages: 32

Examining the sense and science behind Ghana’s current blanket fertilizer recommendation

This paper was written to help bolster the case and present visual evidence demonstrating why it is important to seriously consider spatial soil fertility variability in Ghana and to promote area-specific fertilizer recommendations. Using geostatistical analysis of soil samples collected from farmer plots in three districts (Tamale Municipality, Savelugu-Nanton, and West Mamprusi in northern Ghana), the paper analyzes spatial variations in soil fertility. The results clearly show that there are variations in soil pH, organic matter content, and available phosphorous even at the community level, supporting the need for Ghana to seriously consider location-specific fertilizer recommendations.

The Child Health Implications of Privatizing Africa’s Urban Water Supply
  • Language: en
  • Pages: 48

The Child Health Implications of Privatizing Africa’s Urban Water Supply

Identifying policies which can improve water sector management is critically important given the global burden of water-related disease. Each year, 1 in 10 child deaths—roughly 800,000 in total—is the direct result of diarrhea. Can private-sector participation (PSP) in the urban piped water sector improve child health? The author uses child-level data from 39 African countries during 1986–2010 to show that introducing PSP decreases diarrhea among urban dwelling children under five years of age by 5.6 percentage points, or 35 percent of its mean prevalence. PSP also leads to greater reliance on piped water. To attribute causality, the author exploits time variation in the private water market share controlled by African countries’ former colonizers. A placebo analysis reveals that PSP does not affect symptoms of respiratory illness in the same children, nor does it affect a rural control group unaffected by PSP.