Commentary: Agriculture Can Give a Helping Hand to Cities; Roundtable Workshop Marks Beginning of Urban Food and Nutrition Study in Ghana; Research in North Africa and West Asia to Benefit Farmers on Fragile Lands; Ecoregional Mapping Helps Pinpoint Areas Prone to Malnutrition; Why Are Diets Changing in Asia?; New Booklet Spreads the 2020 Vision to Broader Audiences; Policies Aim to Avoid Conflict Over Dwindling Natural Resources; 2020 Vision Resources Catalog Now Available; Disease and Food Security: Two New Perspectives; Indicators of Performance Quality Applied to Indian Irrigation Syste

"This study analyzes work, childcare arrangements, and earnings of mothers in the poor neighborhoods of Guatemala City and Greater Accra, Ghana, two urban areas where formal- and informal-sector work differ in importance. Unlike previous studies on childcare that take mother's work status as given, this paper treats childcare choice and labor force participation of women as joint decisions. Our empirical results indicate that participation in the labor market and use of formal day care are, in fact, jointly determined.

Child labor is widespread in developing countries, but its causes are debatable. Poverty is considered the primary reason, but many theoretical and empirical analyses show that other factors, such as lack of access to credit, poor school quality, and labor market opportunities play equal or even greater roles in the decision to have children work. This study surveys the existing literature and, taking into account urban-rural divides, aims to shed light on the debate with empirical evidence from Nepal, Peru, and Zimbabwe.

Since 1985, the Chinese government has given high priority to building roads, particularly high-quality roads that connect industrial centers. This report evaluates the contribution roads have made to poverty reduction and economic growth in China over the last two decades. It disaggregates road infrastructure into different classes to account for differences in their quality, and then estimates the impact of road investments on overall economic growth, agricultural growth, urban growth, urban poverty reduction, and rural poverty reduction.

The form and function of many cities are increasingly marred by congestion, sprawl and socioeconomic segregation, preventing them from experiencing expected productivity gains associated with urbanization. We operationalize these insights by creating a stylized agent-based model of a theoretical city, inspired by social complexity theory and the new urban literature.

Donor Report

With urban dwellers purchasing 80 percent or more of their food, understanding urban employment is critical to designing policies and programs to address urban hunger and poverty. Reviewing the literature, but also using data from household surveys conducted by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) and others in five countries of Latin America, Asia, and Africa, this paper profiles urban employment in developing-country cities.

This paper examines nonmarket interactions among migrants from same origins in the urban labor market of Bangkok, Thailand. We test whether the labor-market performance of previous migrants has externalities to that of new migrants who moved from the same province of origin.

This paper illustrates how the evolution of input/output policies in the food-grain sector in Bangladesh have been the result of interaction between various interest groups such as agricultural/rural and industrial/urban groups. The interaction between the diverse viewpoints and responsibilities of the various policymaking institutions engaged in making and implementing foodgrain policies have also affected the decisions of the government.

Traditional food marketing systems in developing countries are often not trusted. In consequence, policy makers frequently try to regulate them and modern market arrangements increasingly are emerging to address some of their presumed deficiencies. However, it is unclear how trustworthy these markets actually are and if and to what extent regulation and modernization affects market governance. In this paper we look at the case of coffee in urban settings in Ethiopia to test trustworthiness along three dimensions of trade transactions - weights, quality, and the presence of illegal trade.

Project paper

The Hogares Comunitarios Program (HCP) was established in Guatemala City in 1991 as a direct response to the increased need for affordable and reliable childcare for women in urban Guatemala. The government-sponsored pilot program was designed as a strategy to alleviate poverty by providing working parents with low-cost, quality childcare within their communities. The program aimed at promoting child development and at filling the existing gap in preschool education in Guatemala. The pilot program rapidly expanded to both urban and rural areas of all 22 departments of the country.