A series of high-profile food-related scares around the globe has drawn attention to the issue of food safety and other health risks associated with agriculture. Because the scope of the problem is different at different levels of economic development, we need nuanced policy options to promote...

The impacts of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) on food systems, poverty, and nutrition have been caused by generalized economic recession and disruptions in agrifood supply chains. This article reviews a growing empirical literature assessing those impacts. The review confirms that income...

Evidence on the association between traditional poverty measures and health is widely available in the literature. However, the traditional ex-post poverty measures neglect many aspects of household welfare by overlooking the risk that a household faces in view of fewer resources available to...

This paper analyses the effects of access to Rural Public Works (RPW) and Public Distribution System (PDS), a public food subsidy programme, on consumption poverty, vulnerability and undernutrition in India drawing upon the large household data sets constructed by National Sample Survey (NSS)...

Using pooled household level data for the Indian states of Rajasthan and Andhra Pradesh we find that the size of landholdings is a negative predictor of participation in the National Rural Employment Guarantee Program (NREGP). In state level analysis this pattern survives in Rajasthan but...

Economists have long recognized that a household's sense of well-being depends not just on its average income or expenditures, but also on the risks it faces. Hence vulnerability is a more satisfactory measure of welfare than poverty. In this paper we measure the extent of vulnerability as...

We examine the profile of poverty and vulnerability in Tajikistan using household level panel data for 2004 and 2005. The drop in poverty was largely due to increase in remittances from workers working overseas. People are more likely to be poor if they live in a) rural areas, b) large...

What are the root causes of Africa's current state of under-development? Is it the long history of slave trade, or the legacy of extractive colonial institutions, or the fallout of malaria? We investigate the relative contributions of these factors using an instrumental variable approach. The...

Economists have long recognized that a household's well-being depends not just on its average income or expenditure, but also on the risks it faces. Hence vulnerability is a more satisfactory measure of (inadequate) welfare than poverty. We measure vulnerability as expected poverty and establish...