Donor Report

Brief

"Recent trends in agricultural growth and food security in Eastern and Central Africa (ECA) have been discouraging. With very low labor productivity, yields, and growth rates, agriculture is unable to keep up with population growth or achieve the type of pro-poor growth needed to reduce poverty dramatically.Yet agriculture accounts for about half of the region’s gross domestic product (GDP) and is the main source of livelihood for the majority of the population. Behind this gloomy picture, however, lies agriculture’s potential to be the engine for growth in ECA.

The unprecedented, large-scale, rural-to-urban migration in China has left many rural children living apart from their parents. Yet the consequences for child development of living without one or more parents due to migration are largely unknown. In this study, we examine the impact of parental migration on one measure of child development, the nutritional status of young children in rural areas. We use the interaction terms of wage growth in provincial capital cities with initial village migrant networks as instrumental variables to account for migration selection.

Using child-level panel data from rural areas of Ethiopia, this paper analyzes effects of both economic and non-economic shocks on child cognition skills measured after the early childhood age window.

Booklet

This paper presents evidence on rural Ethiopian households’ time allocation to different activities, especially fuel collection work, and examines the effect of changes in the availability of firewood resources on households’ time allocation to fuel collection and on- and off-farm income generation.

Despite rapid income growth, South Asia has lagged behind the rest of Asia in reducing poverty and hunger. South Asia accounts for more than two-fifths of the world's poor, and although the region seems on track to meet the first Millennium Development Goal (MDG) of halving poverty and hunger by 2015, it faces challenges in achieving that goal.

This paper contributes to the economic analysis of marriage and the family by examining and analyzing the relative importance of potential determinants of assets brought to marriages in rural Ethiopia. One potential determinant is assortative matching, whereby the rich marry the rich and the poor marry the poor, generating a positive correlation between assets brought to marriage by both spouses. Another determinant explored is compensating parental transfers at marriage, whereby parents reduce assets transferred to their marrying children if their spouses bring more.

Malnutrition is widespread in Nigeria, especially in rural areas. Nigerians are vulnerable to chronic food shortages, erratic supply, poor quality food, and fluctuating food prices. The huge investment in ensuring food and nutrition security for Nigerians has had limited success, and therefore, there is a need to review and learn from past interventions. This brief provides a glimpse at rural food and nutrition security in Nigeria and highlights gaps in existing knowledge and capacity to analyze Nigeria's food and nutrition security situation.

Credit for investments that pay back in the medium to long term (three to five years or longer) is in short supply in rural areas. Credit unions and microfinance institutions (MFIs), which generally have better outreach than commercial banks in rural areas, typically provide only short-term credit. Credit available from informal sources (such as moneylenders, family, and friends) is usually both short term and too costly for investment financing.