This paper reports that the vulnerable in Mexico???people who left poverty but have not yet gained a place in the middle class???make up 30-40 percent of the population, thanks to a combination of highly unsettled, low-paid employment, living in communities with poor services, and over-exposure...

Many challenges were identified during the Fifth National Development Plan (FNDP) in Zambia. To address these challenges and realize pro-poor growth, the Sixth National Development Plan (SNDP) was set in motion. The SNDP, which covers 2011 to 2015, was designed to accomplish three goals: to...

This paper examines the effects of climate change on poverty through the relationship between indicators of climate change (temperature and rainfall change) and municipal level gross domestic product, and subsequently between gross domestic product and poverty. The evidence suggests that climate...

Throughout many countries in the world, the measurement of food security currently includes accounting for the importance of perception and anxiety about meeting basic food needs. Using panel data from Malawi, this paper shows that worrying about food security is linked to self-reports of having...

The 2014-15 Ebola epidemic took a devastating human and economic toll on three West African countries, of which Liberia was perhaps the hardest hit. The pathways through which the crisis affected economic activity in these largely agrarian societies remain poorly understood. To study these...

A climate change vulnerability index in agriculture is presented at the municipal level in Mexico. Because the index is built with a multidimensional approach to vulnerability (exposure, sensitivity and adaptive capacity), it represents a tool for policy makers, academics and government alike to...

The availability of weather data from remotely sensed Earth observation data has reduced the cost of including weather variables in econometric models. Weather variables are common instrumental variables used to predict economic outcomes and serve as an input in modeling crop yields for rainfed...

Diversification into high-value cash crops among smallholders has been propagated as a strategy to improve welfare in rural areas. However, the extent to which cash crop production spurs projected gains remains an under-researched question, especially in the context of market imperfections...

Crop yields in smallholder systems are traditionally assessed using farmer-reported information in surveys, occasionally by crop cuts for a sub-section of a farmer's plot, and rarely using full-plot harvests. Accuracy and cost vary dramatically across methods. In parallel, satellite data is...

Sierra Leone is one of the poorest countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, with a gross national income per capita of USD 510 in 2022. The country ranked near the bottom of all countries in the latest Human Development Index. Despite these low rankings, in the years since the end of the 10-year civil...