This paper reports on two methods used for identifying alternative indicators of chronic and acute food insecurity. A need for alternative indicators exists since many of the "benchmark" or "gold standard" indicators (such as household income or dietary intake) are too cumbersome to be of...

Human milk is a food that meets all conditions for an infant's nutrition security and is the most important food for more than 10 percent of the population in Sub-Saharan Africa (children less than three years of age). Statistics on production of human milk at local and national levels are...

Are public transfers targeted toward children largely neutralized by the household, as the theory of altruism implies, or is there an intrahousehold “flypaper effect” whereby such transfers “stick” to the child? This paper studies the impact of a school feeding program on child caloric...

In Malawi, maize is the major crop and food staple. Given limited off-farm employment opportunities, much-needed increases in household income for improving food security must come from gains in agricultural productivity through better technology and more profitable crops. In the past,...

Micronutrient deficiencies are particularly severe in Bangladesh. Understanding howhousehold income, food prices, parental education and nutritional knowledge, and culturally-based customs and food preferences interact to determine food consumption patterns (particularly for nonstaple foods),...

This study attempts to identify characteristics of the existing child and the maternal care environment that could be used as a basis for designing policies and programs to improve the nutritional status of children. For the present study, all children between 6-18 months of age were selected...

The objective of IFPRI's multicountry research program on rural financial policies for food security of the poor is to identify policies and institutional arrangements that help the poor integrate themselves into sustainable savings and credit systems such that they have an increased capacity to...

Group lending has received much attention in recent years because of its perceived potential in providing financial services to poor households that lack traditional collateral. The analysis in this paper focuses on the effects of program design, community and group characteristics on the...

Secondary crops are of increasing interest to policymakers and planners in developing countries because of a desire to diversify economic activities and because of their proven potential to raise farm incomes and rural employment. To assess this potential, basic information on the demand...

This paper uses income decomposition techniques to demonstrate the importance of livestock income in improving rural income distribution. It is based on three-year household panel data (1986 to 1989) from rural Pakistan. The paper first decomposes total income among five sources: agricultural,...