Cash transfer programmes have become an important tool of social protection and poverty reduction strategies in low- and middle-income countries. In the past decade, a growing number of African governments have launched cash transfer programmes as part of their strategies of social protection....

A widely accepted tenet of the development literature is that, in the process of structural economic transformation that accompanies economic development, the farm sector as a share of the country’s GDP will decline as a country’s GDP grows (Chenery and Syrquin, 1975). In rural areas, this...

Access to assets and agrarian institutions is of critical importance to the economic viability of rural households. Understanding the extent of this access and how it links to the ability of rural households to employ different pathways out of poverty is thus vital for designing rural...

Access to assets and agrarian institutions is of critical importance to the economic viability of rural households. Understanding the extent of this access and how it links to the ability of rural households to employ different pathways out of poverty is thus vital for designing rural...

Cross country comparisons of rural income generating activities are analyzed to identify ways to design more effective and better targeted rural development policies. The full range of rural income generating activities carried out by rural households are examined, including: 1) the relative...

Agriculture is at the core of the livelihoods of a large share of rural households throughout the developing world. Agricultural growth is a major engine for overall economic growth and possibly the single most important pathway out of poverty in the rural space. This paper characterizes...

This paper analyzes the household level impact of an increase in price of major tradable staple foods in a cross section of developing countries, using nationally representative household surveys. We find that, in the short term, poorer households and households with limited asset endowments and...

In 2006, the Government of Malawi initiated the Social Cash Transfer (SCT) programme as part of a poverty reduction strategy that targeted ultra-poor, labour-constrained households. The SCT programme is an unconditional cash transfer designed to reduce poverty, hunger and starvation, and improve...